KREATiS announces partnership with Bayer for Advanced Toxicology Testing Software, iSafeRat®

The new technology provides in silico ecotoxicology predictions based on the Mechanisms of Toxic Action (MechOA) decision tree boosting R&D in a time and cost-efficient way

November 9th – (L’ISLE D’ABEAU, FRANCE) – France-based technology company KREATiS announced today a new partnership with Bayer which grants the international agriculture leader access to KREATiS’ pioneering technology system, iSafeRat®. The iSafeRat® platform produces in silico toxicology predictions downstream of the MechOA decision on toxicity alerts using high accuracy computer modelling (HA-QSARs). The pure in silico method provides a safe and effective alternative to testing on vertebrate animals. Bayer will use the iSafeRat® technology in the development of new crop protection chemistries.

Both industry members and regulators worldwide recognise the valuable information being provided by in silico methods especially as an alternative to testing chemical toxicity in vertebrate animals, a practice which is no longer accepted in the EU for the safety assessment. In silico predictions, even for bioactive substances, can effectively identify impurities or substances which are metabolised or biodegraded into multiple other structures. In many cases computational (eco)toxicology is a simple and rapid solution that can produce additional insight and understanding of potential safety risks.

“This project is the culmination of 7 years of computational chemistry and toxicology work by KREATiS to predict substance/biological matrix interactions at increasingly higher levels of molecular complexity. Combining the MechoA alert scheme with the quantitative prediction tools downstream we can help Bayer to predict fish and invertebrate toxicity for really quite complex structures of active substance. KREATiS is delighted to have contracted with Bayer creating a concrete opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of these new tools,” said Dr. Paul Thomas, President of KREATiS. “Bayer, as a major crop protection company has internationally renowned ecotoxicology experts in its team and this can only help boost the chances of a successful outcome for this project. What we have seen so far is that there is a real collaborative spirit.”

KREATiS’s in silico toxicology predictions will be used by Bayer to accelerate discovery of innovative crop protection chemistry. KREATiS was chosen as the winner of Bayer’s 2020 Hello Tomorrow innovation challenge.

“Bayer is committed to partnering and working closely with innovative scientists to help meet the expectations of farmers and society,” said Raphael Dumain, Head of Innovation Sourcing & Partnership Management for Bayer Crop Science. “Working with KREATiS will help us continue to develop new crop protection chemistries that are safe, effective, and sustainable.”

 About KREATiS

KREATiS, founded in 2014, is a private research and development organization dedicated to understanding the mechanistic interactions of chemical and biological materials, and quantifying their impact on human health and the environment. With this knowledge, KREATiS provides consulting and powerful tools to researchers, including the exclusive in silico computational system iSafeRat®, which uses KREATiS’ MechOA profiler to determine toxicity pathways that can have impacts on human health and environmental sustainability. KREATiS helps researchers replace experimentation with confidence.