Department Environmental Toxicology

To reduce animal use in the context of chemical safety testing and risk assessment, alternative in vitro methods are being developed and adopted. A breakthrough in this area is the RTgill-W1 cell line acute toxicity assay, based on a rainbow trout gill cell line. Developed by Kristin Schirmer’s group at Eawag, this assay has demonstrated strong predictive power for fish acute toxicity across a wide range of chemicals by a strong correlation with in vivo data determining the concentration that causes 50 % lethality (LC₅₀). In recognition of its reliability and relevance, the method was adopted in 2021 by the OECD as Test Guideline 249 (TG 249)—the first internationally accepted fish cell line-based test for aquatic toxicity assessments. It is also available as ISO Standard 21115 for retrospective water quality analysis.

With the growing global uptake of the RTgill-W1 assay across academia, industry, and regulatory bodies, a structured collection of data would be of great value. Therefore, we developed and maintain the Fish Acute Cell Toxicity (FACT) database — a curated, comprehensive database of acute cell viability data with fish cell lines.

With the FACT database, we aim to strengthen confidence in the RTgill-W1 assay by providing centralized access to the current body of knowledge, enabling the identification of data gaps and facilitating further definition of its applicability domain. Cell viability data from other fish cell lines is also included in the database as is data that deviates to some degree from the OECD TG 249 experimental design, e.g., based on exposure medium or plate format. Data can be filtered for compliance with the OECD TG 249 requirements at three levels of adherence.

The expansion of the database depends on data contributions from people generating this data and is to the benefit of the scientific community at large.

If you have data that fits within the scope of the database, please contact factdb@eawag.ch.