OECD Home › Chemical safety and biosafety › The OECD QSAR Toolbox
What does the Toolbox do?
Download the Toolbox
Guidance Documents and Training Materials
Public Discussion Forum
FAQs on the Toolbox
To increase the regulatory acceptance of (Q)SAR methods, the OECD has started the development of a QSAR Toolbox to make (Q)SAR technology readily accessible, transparent, and less demanding in terms of infrastructure costs.
The Toolbox is developed in phases. The first version emphasises technological proof-of-concept and was released in 2008. The second phase of the project to develop a more comprehensive Toolbox which fully implements the capabilities of the first version was launched in November 2008 and version 2.0 was released in October 2010. The third generation of the Toolbox, containing new features was launched in October 2012. The most recent version 3.1 with additional features was released in January 2013.
What does the Toolbox do?
The Toolbox is a software application intended to be used by governments, chemical industry and other stakeholders in filling gaps in (eco)toxicity data needed for assessing the hazards of chemicals. The Toolbox incorporates information and tools from various sources into a logical workflow. Crucial to this workflow is grouping chemicals into chemical categories.
The seminal features of the Toolbox are:
1. Identification of relevant structural characteristics and potential mechanism or mode of action of a target chemical.
2. Identification of other chemicals that have the same structural characteristics and/or mechanism or mode of action.
3. Use of existing experimental data to fill the data gap(s).
New features of the QSAR Toolbox version 3.0 are:
In version 3.1 of the QSAR Toolbox a number of these new features has been updated or extended and a new database for observed rat in vivo metabolism has been added. In addition, the QSAR Toolbox 3.1 contains improved interface and search functionalities (see release notes)
The toolbox also provides an approach to predict skin sensitization based on an new concept of adverse outcome pathways. This pathway approach is based on the concept that toxicity results from a chemical first reaching and then interacting with an initial key target (e.g. membrane, receptor) in the organism; this is defined as the primary molecular initiating event. Further to this primary interaction begins a series of events that can individually be documented and tested, resulting in an adverse outcome.
Download our brochure!
The latest version of the QSAR Toolbox (version 3.1) as well as instructions for installation and getting started can be downloaded here.
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Download the QSAR Toolbox (v3.1) (560 MB) Stand Alone or Server-Client Version |
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Download What’s new in TB 3.0 |
| Download the Release Notes 3.0 |
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Download the Installation instructions: |
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Download the Toolbox 3.0 Database migration |
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Download the Manual for getting started |
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Download the Quick reference guidance for getting started |
Note:
- Due to the size of the files, the downloads may take a few minutes.
- The same download facilities are also available on the following mirror web sites:
Laboratory of Mathematical Chemistry
The Toolbox has benefitted from the contributions of numerous experts in governments, NGOs and the chemical industry. The software was developed by the Laboratory of Mathematical Chemistry.
Guidance Documents and Training Materials for Using the Toolbox
The manuals of the QSAR Toolbox can be downloaded from the following table:
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Title |
Link, document number/version and date of publication |
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IUCLID 5 Import/Export via Webservices |
PDF (1.1; February 2011) |
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Guidance document for using the OECD (Q)SAR Application Toolbox to develop chemical categories according to the OECD Guidance on Grouping of Chemicals |
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Guidance on importing databases |
PDF (1.0; April 2011) |
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Tips and tricks |
PDF (1.1; February 2011) |
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Strategies for grouping chemicals for data gap filling for acute aquatic toxicity endpoints |
PDF (3.1; June 2013) |
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Strategies for grouping chemicals to fill data gaps to assess genetic toxicity and genotoxic carcinogenicity |
PDF (3.1; June 2013) |
Training materials for the Toolbox are also available below. This material can be freely used for training purposes.
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Title and main features |
Slides |
Video tutorial |
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Step-by-step example on how to predict the skin sensitisation potential approach of a chemical by read-across based on an analogue approach (for beginners) |
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Step-by-step example of how to predict aquatic toxicity for an untested target chemical by the trend analysis approach (for beginners) |
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Step-by-step example of how to predict Ames mutagenicity for a chemical by a qualitative read-across approach. (for beginners) |
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Step-by-step example of how to predict acute toxicity to Tetrahymena pyriformis by trend analysis using category pruning capabilities (December 2012) |
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Step-by-step example of how to build and evaluate a category based on mechanism of action with protein and DNA binding (December 2012) |
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Step-by-step example of how to build a category for more than one target chemicals and predict acute toxicity to fish (December 2012) |
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Step-by-step example of how to evaluate an ad-hoc category of aliphatic amines and to predict an ecotoxicological endpoint (December 2012) |
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Step-by-step example of how to build a user-defined profiling scheme (December 2012) |
Video | |
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Step-by-step example of how to categorize an inventory by mechanistic behaviour of the chemicals which it consists (December 2012) |
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Step-by-step example of how to build a user-defined QSAR (December 2012) |
Additional training material will be published as it is developed.
The OECD does not foresee to organise training sesions for the use of the Toolbox. Nevertheless training sessions are organised by other organisations which are referenced here:
A public discussion forum for users of the QSAR Toolbox is available. On this site users can:
• exchange experience with using the software (tips and tricks),
• seek guidance,
• exchange databases,
• exchange user defined profilers and QSARs, and
• make suggestions for improvements.
The discussion forum is accessible here: Forum
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