David G. Allen, PhD, is the recipient of the Society of Toxicology (SOT) 2017 Enhancement of Animal Welfare Award. He routinely collaborates with international scientists to organize workshops and on projects spanning a wide variety of topics relevant to alternative toxicology test methods. He has been integrally involved in reviews that resulted in internationally harmonized test guidelines for alternative methods for skin sensitization and eye and skin irritation testing.
Dr. Allen also is involved in coordinating efforts to bring together stakeholders from government and industry to develop strategies to replace animal use in regulatory safety testing. He has co-organized workshops directed towards alternatives for acute systemic toxicity and vaccine potency and safety testing and has served on international peer review panels and validation management teams for non-animal testing approaches. His publications describe research, development, and validation activities associated with alternative approaches for the most commonly used regulatory safety tests for skin and eye irritation, skin sensitization, and acute systemic toxicity testing. He also has co-authored publications describing alternative approaches to endocrine disruptor screening, databases of curated bioactivity data, and applying adverse outcome pathways to better understand toxicity while reducing animal use.
Dr. Allen currently serves as a vice president at Integrated Laboratory Systems Inc. (ILS), a multidisciplinary contract toxicological research and testing organization that provides support to government and commercial customers focused on environmental and human health safety testing. He is responsible for providing scientific leadership, management, and direction to ILS scientific and technical staff. As the principal investigator of the ILS support contract with the National Toxicology Program (NTP) Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods (NICEATM), Dr. Allen has assembled a team of scientists who are considered to be global leaders in the evaluation and validation of alternative approaches that replace, reduce, and refine the use of animals in toxicology testing. He participates in local, national, and international meetings in support of NICEATM and the Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods (ICCVAM) and has been involved in supporting NICEATM and ICCVAM for more than 15 years.
Dr. Allen received an MS in biological sciences from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and a PhD in cell biology from North Carolina State University. An SOT member since 1999, Dr. Allen has been an invited speaker for numerous workshops and satellite meetings and has chaired sessions on alternative toxicological test methods. He has co-authored numerous poster presentations at the SOT Annual Meeting and served as the In Vitro and Alternative Methods Specialty Section president in 2009‒2010. Beyond SOT, he is the current president of the American Society of Cellular and Computational Toxicology.