The Botanical Safety Consortium: a public-private partnership to enhance the botanical safety toolkit

The Botanical Safety Consortium (BSC) is a public-private partnership aimed at enhancing the toolkit for conducting the safety evaluation of botanicals. The BSC serves as a global forum for scientists from government, academia, industry, & NGOS to work collaboratively on developing & integrating new methods based into routine botanical safety assessments. The objectives of the BSC are to: engage with a broad group of global stakeholders to leverage the safety approaches; establish appropriate levels of chemical characterization for botanicals; identify fit-for-purpose in vitro & in silico assays to evaluate botanical safety; evaluate the application of these tools via comparison to the currently available information; & integrate these tools & approaches into a framework that can facilitate robust evaluation of botanicals. Initial endpoints of focus are genotoxicity, hepatotoxicity, ADME, developmental & reproductive toxicity, cardiotoxicity, neurotoxicity, & systemic toxicity. Groups addressing pharmacognosy, chemical analysis & data analysis have also been initiated.

This presentation will provide an overview on the structure, goals, & strategies of this initiative & early insights regarding our first objectives, namely the selection & prioritization of botanicals based on putative toxicological properties, & pilot work regarding level of chemical characterization of candidate botanicals to be used for testing.

Publication History

Article published online:
13 December 2021