Department's Overview

Toxicology is a field of science that helps us understand the harmful effects that chemicals, substances have on living organisms and their environment. It is a dynamic multi-disciplinary science that required interactions between biology, chemistry, medicine, veterinary science, pharmacy and environmental biology. Over the past few years, toxicology has played a vital part in drug development.

For more than 50 years, the Department of Toxicology and the Institute has been providing services for the comprehensive toxicity testing studies for registration of pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, biocides, cosmetics, chemicals and related products. Department of Toxicology is actively engaged in Training, research and testing. In vivo toxicity testing is conducted by the department under the Centralized Experimental Animal House Facility, with different laboratory animals viz. mice, rats, rabbits, guinea pigs as per the regulatory requirements of the OECD, ICH, FDA, EMEA, OPPTS, BIS and/ or ISO10993. The Centralized Experimental Animal House facility meets the requirements as per the guidelines of Committee for the Control & Supervision of Experiments on Animals (CCSEA) and is registered with the CCSEA. The facility has Individual Ventilated Caging System (IVC) to house rodents to prevent cross- contamination. An Institutional Animal Ethics Committee (IAEC) has been constituted as per CCSEA guidelines and reviews the scientific projects of the institute quarterly. All animal experiments are reviewed and approved by the Institutional Animal Ethics Committee (IAEC).

Zebrafish are vertebrates and therefore share a high degree of sequence and functional homology with mammals, including humans. Due to the conservation of cell biological and developmental processes across all vertebrates, studies in fish can give great insight into human disease processes. The department also houses a Zebrafish facility. The facility meets the requirements as per the guidelines of Committee for the Control & Supervision of Experiments on Animals (CCSEA) and is registered with the CCSEA. The zebrafish facility undertakes the housing and maintenance of zebrafish. Various drug screening assays and toxicity testing is done on adult zebrafish, zebrafish eggs and larvae. The facility is equipped with modern equipments like Automated fish facility, Stereomicroscope and Micromanipulator and injector. Fish toxicity testing is performed as per regulatory guidelines. All animal experiments are reviewed and approved by the Institutional Animal Ethics Committee (IAEC).

Department of Toxicology is offering regular and short term training courses and also undertake scientific workshop on handling and maintenance of small laboratory animal and zebrafish.