COC Workshop - 2022

3.8          The COC held a workshop in November 2022 which aimed to determine what definitive steps can be undertaken to make progress towards improvement of the chemical risk assessment process and regulatory requirements for carcinogenicity, based on research undertaken over the last 10-20 years. The workshop considered issues in the context of pesticides, with different regulatory areas to be covered in future workshops.

3.9          Dr Susy Brescia (UK HSE) presented an outline of the status quo of the cancer assessment of pesticide active substances, identifying the limitations of the current paradigm and exploring some of the new approaches that are being developed. A second presentation was given by Dr Phil Botham (Syngenta Product Safety) which outlined a project being carried out by a working group of (mainly US) experts called the Rethinking Carcinogenicity Assessment for Agrochemicals Project (ReCAAP). This aims to propose a weight of evidence approach for waiving rodent cancer bioassays for the registration of food-use pesticides. The final presentation from Dr Richard Haworth (COC member) explored new approaches being taken for pharmaceuticals which evaluate whether a 2-year rat study is likely to add value to a human carcinogenicity risk assessment, and whether the assessment of pesticides can learn from these.

3.10       A number of key questions were then addressed in breakout discussion groups to answer the main theme questions:

• What opportunities are there to improve carcinogenic risk assessment in the UK?
• What is the future of the 2 year / lifetime bioassay?

3.11       A draft summary of the workshop will be presented to COC at the meeting in March 2023. Further development of the summary is ongoing.