Dr. Subhash Basak
Dr. Subhash Basak
These are exciting times in terms of managing chemical information. With some 80,000 industrial chemicals loose in our environment, understanding their potential toxicity is critical. The Chemical Abstract Services Registry master list had more than 29 million entries in 2001 and of those chemicals, approximately 1000 annually end up in actual use. Methods of testing current carcinogens include laboratory animals (in vivo) at a cost of approximately $5 million over 5 years; or cell cultures (in vitro) at a cost of $20,000 to $50,000 over a period of weeks; or computer modeling (in silico) at a cost of less than one cent in less than one second.
