A screening strategy for identifying the developmental and reproductive toxicity potential of botanicals

HESI Global is pleased to share a new publication from the Botanical Safety Consortium, “A screening strategy for identifying the developmental and reproductive toxicity potential of botanicals,” published in Pharmaceutical Biology.

Botanicals are widely used in dietary supplements, cosmetics, and traditional medicines, but their safety can be difficult to evaluate because they are chemically complex and variable. Developmental and reproductive toxicity, or DART, is an important endpoint because effects may involve fertility, pregnancy outcomes, fetal development, or postnatal growth.

To address this challenge, the Botanical Safety Consortium DART Working Group developed a strategy to evaluate a battery of New Approach Methodologies, or NAMs, for screening botanical extracts. The paper describes complementary tools, including stem cell assays, zebrafish embryos, Caenorhabditis elegans, transcriptomics, pharmacology profiling, and selected in silico tools.

This strategy provides a foundation for future testing of integrated NAMs for botanical safety assessment, supporting more efficient screening while helping reduce reliance on mammalian models.

Read the full article: Mahony et al., 2026. A screening strategy for identifying the developmental and reproductive toxicity potential of botanicals. Pharmaceutical Biology. https://doi.org/10.1080/13880209.2026.2659421

Figure 2. Overview of the model systems and endpoint types used to determine the suitability of these assays for botanicals. Figure created with BioRender.