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In 2005, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), with support from the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP), funded a project at the National Research Council (NRC) to develop a long-range vision for toxicity testing and a strategic plan for implementing that vision. Both agencies wanted future toxicity testing and assessment paradigms to meet evolving regulatory needs. Challenges include the large numbers of substances that need to be tested and how to incorporate recent advances in molecular toxicology, computational sciences, and information technology; to rely increasingly on human as opposed to animal data; and to offer increased efficiency in design and costs (1–5). In response, the NRC Committee on Toxicity Testing and Assessment of Environmental Agents produced two reports that reviewed current toxicity testing, identified key issues, and developed a vision and implementation strategy to create a major shift in the assessment of chemical hazard and risk (6,7). Although the NRC reports have laid out a solid theoretical rationale, comprehensive and rigorously gathered data (and comparisons with historical animal data) will determine whether the hypothesized improvements will be realized in practice. For this purpose, NTP, EPA, and the National Institutes of Health Chemical Genomics Center (NCGC) (organizations with expertise in experimental toxicology, computational toxicology, and high-throughput technologies, respectively) have established a collaborative research program. PMID: 18276874; PMCID: PMC2679521