The Next Generation of Risk Assessment Multi-Year Study—Highlights of Findings, Applications to Risk Assessment, and Future Directions

Background:The Next Generation (NexGen) of Risk Assessment effort is a multi-year collaboration among several organizations evaluating new, potentially more efficient molecular, computational, and systems biology approaches to risk assessment. This article summarizes our findings, suggests applications to risk assessment, and identifies strategic research directions.Objective:Our specific objectives were to test whether advanced biological data and methods could better inform our understanding of public health risks posed by environmental exposures.Methods:New data and methods were applied and evaluated for use in hazard identification and dose–response assessment. Biomarkers of exposure and effect, and risk characterization were also examined. Consideration was given to various decision contexts with increasing regulatory and public health impacts. Data types included transcriptomics, genomics, and proteomics. Methods included molecular epidemiology and clinical studies, bioinformatic knowledge mining, p...