The National Toxicology Centre (NTC), being set up at National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER) is to be formally inaugurated by Ram Vilas Paswan, Union Minister for Chemicals and Fertilizers on December 18.

The toxicity testing facility is being set up to address the changing needs in drug discovery programmes regarding the safety evaluation in the process of drug discovery and development. Any New Chemical Entities (NCE) needs the safety data prior to phase-I clinical trails permission. The preclinical toxicological data need to be generated in a Good Laboratory Practice (GLP) compliant testing facility. Very few Institutions are having such facility in India and the one coming up in NIPER would be among the best.

The NIPER facility will be government GLP certified and is envisaged as a reference centre for the regulatory toxicity testing.

The centre is set up with the assistance from the Department of Science and Technology (DST). The DST had sanctioned Rs 1.3 crore under the Pharmaceutical Research and Development Support Fund (PRDSF) for implementing the GLP requirements in the current facility.

The other objective of this centre is to train technically qualified manpower in the area of regulatory toxicology. Qualified and experienced toxicologists are in short supply.