Chemical risk assessment in food animals via physiologically based pharmacokinetic modeling − Part I: Veterinary drugs on human food safety assessment
Kun Mi, Xue Wu, Zhoumeng Lin
Abstract
• Drug residues in animal-derived meat, milk, and egg products are a safety concern. • PBPK modeling is useful in the safety assessment of animal-derived food products. • This review summarizes recent advancement of PBPK models for drugs in food animals. • Challenges of applying PBPK models for food safety assessment are discussed. • Future perspectives on integrating advanced AI approaches with PBPK are presented. Veterinary drugs and environmental pollutants can enter food animals and remain as residues in food chains threatening human food safety and health. Performing health risk and food safety assessments to derive safety levels of these xenobiotics can protect human health. Physiologically based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling is a mathematical tool to quantitatively describe chemical disposition in humans and animals informing human food safety and health risk assessments. However, few reviews focus on the application of PBPK models in food animals and discuss their relationship to human food safety and health risk assessments in the last five years (2020–2024). In this series of reviews, we introduce the methodology, recent progress and challenges of PBPK modeling in food animals. The present review is Part I of this series of reviews and it focuses on applications of PBPK models of veterinary drugs in food animals, whereas Part II is a companion review focusing on environmental chemicals. Advanced strategies of PBPK modeling in risk and food safety assessment, including population PBPK, interactive PBPK web dashboard, and generic PBPK are also summarized in Part I. Additionally, we share our perspective on the existing challenges and future direction for PBPK modeling of veterinary medicines in food animals.