Read-across, an alternative approach for hazard assessment, has been widely adopted when in vivo data are unavailable for chemicals of interest. Read-across is enabled via in silico tools such as quantitative structure activity relationship (QSAR) modeling. In this study, the current status of structure activity relationship (SAR)-based read-across applications in the Republic of Korea (ROK) was examined considering both chemical risk assessments and chemical registrations from different sectors, including regulatory agencies, industry, and academia. From the regulatory perspective, the Ministry of Environment (MOE) established the Act on Registration and Evaluation of Chemicals (AREC) in 2019 to enable registrants to submit alternative data such as information from read-across instead of in vivo data to support hazard assessment and determine chemical-specific risks. Further, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) began to consider read-across approaches for establishing acceptable intake (AI) limits of impurities occurring during pharmaceutical manufacturing processes under the ICH M7 guideline. Although read-across has its advantages, this approach also has limitations including (1) lack of standardized criteria for regulatory acceptance, (2) inconsistencies in the robustness of scientific evidence, and (3) deficiencies in the objective reliability of read-across data. The application and acceptance rate of read-across may vary among regulatory agencies. Therefore, sufficient data need to be prepared to verify the hypothesis that structural similarities might lead to similarities in properties of substances (between source and target chemicals) prior to adopting a read-across approach. In some cases, additional tests may be required during the registration process to clarify long-term effects on human health or the environment for certain substances that are data deficient. To improve the quality of read-across data for regulatory acceptance, cooperative efforts from regulatory agencies, academia, and industry are needed to minimize limitations of read-across applications.
Keywords: QSAR; Read-across; alternative approach; chemical registration; computational toxicology; regulation; risk assessment.