Irritant and allergic contact dermatitis are undesired side effects in the\ndevelopment of drugs and cosmetics as well as after contact with environmental or\nindustrial chemicals. Over the last decades, a great deal of progress has been made in the\ndevelopment of alternative In vitro test to assess these issues. Driven by the 7th\nAmendment to the European Cosmetic Directive, the EU policy on chemicals\n(the registration, evaluation, authorization and restriction of chemicals (REACH) system),\nthe update of the European legislation on the protection of animals used in research,\nand emerging visions and strategies for predicting toxicity, in vitro methods are likely to\nplay a major role in the near future. On 12 December 2013, the European Union Reference\nLaboratory for Alternatives to Animal Testing (EURL ECVAM, part of the European\nCommission Joint Research Centre) published its Recommendation on the Direct Peptide\nReactivity Assay (DPRA) for skin sensitization, capable of distinguishing sensitizers from\nnon-sensitizers. Other assays (i.e., KeratinoSensââ??¢ assay) will follow shortly. While a\nnumber of methods are at various stages of development and use, currently it is not\npossible to rank chemicals for their sensitizing potency, an issue that is important for a full\nsafety assessment. It is expected that a predictive method to totally replace animal testing\nwill be in the form of a test battery comprising molecular, cell-based, and/or computational\nmethods, the so-called ââ?¬Å?Integrated Approaches to Testing and Assessmentââ?¬Â. This review\naims to discuss the state-of-the-art in the field of in vitro assessment of contact sensitizers.
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