Fabian Pitter Steinmetz

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Senior Toxicologist at Delphic HSE

In the era of (re)legalisation of medicinal and recreational cannabis, accidental and intentional exposure to edibles, cannabis-infused food products, has increased substantially. However, there is particular concern regarding younger age groups. Most concerning is the increase in hospitalisations. According to a study by Myran et al. (1), province...

Purpose Hemp-based food products and supplements have gained popularity within recent years in Europe. Apart from the non-psychoactive cannabinoid, cannabidiol, these products may also contain Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) which can be of concern for safety and regulatory compliance. In the European Union, the currently accepted limit for THC in he...

Background The supply chains addressing the global demand for major recreational drugs are hardly addressed due to international contracts, particularly the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. Currently applied regulatory changes have several disadvantages ranging from political tensions to the neglect of ecological aspects. The aim of this stu...

Seit der Legalisierung von medizinischem Cannabis in 2017 in Deutschland hat sich vieles verändert. Seitdem rückt ein weiterer Markt ins Rampenlicht, der sich in den letzten 25 Jahren sukzessive entwickelt und mittlerweile weltweit eine große wirtschaftliche Bedeutung bekommen hat: der Nutzhanf- und CBD-Markt. Diese Märkte umfassen CBD-Blüten als p...

Cosmetic ingredients based on more or less refined biological matter (plants, fungi, bacteria, etc.) are gaining popularity. Advances in green chemistry and biotechnology are supporting this general trend further. Following numerous bans on the use of newly generated animal testing data in cosmetic safety assessments, and the worldwide demand for “...

Although there are great regional differences, smokable forms of cocaine (crack, free-base, paco, etc.) are a drug complex associated with often harmful and problematic drug use patterns. While strategies based on drug prohibition did not eradicate the consumption of smokable cocaine forms, prohibition itself led to many harmful effects, such as cr...

Abstract In this paper, we explore the impact of combining different in silico prediction approaches and data sources on the predictive performance of the resulting system. We use inhibition of the hERG ion channel target as the endpoint for this study as it constitutes a key safety concern in drug development and a potential cause of attrition. We...

Introduction: The results from biological assays, such as microsomal intrinsic clearance, are often associated with moderate to high variability. Nevertheless, it is crucial to disciplines, such as drug discovery and toxicological risk assessment, to trust such experimental results. In the following study, a novel approach is suggested, which is ba...

In silico models are essential for the development of integrated alternative methods to identify organ level toxicity and lead towards the replacement of animal testing. These models include (quantitative) structure-activity relationships ((Q)SARs) and, importantly, the identification of structural alerts associated with defined toxicological endpo...

The development of adverse outcome pathways (AOPs) is becoming a key component of twenty-first century toxicology. AOPs provide a conceptual framework that links the molecular initiating event to an adverse outcome through organized toxicological knowledge, bridging the gap from chemistry to toxicological effect. As nuclear receptors (NRs) play ess...

A greater number of toxicity data are becoming publicly available allowing for in silico modelling. However, questions often arise as how to incorporate data quality and how to deal with contradicting data if more than a single datum point is available for the same compound. In this study, two well-known and studied QSAR/QSPR models for skin permea...

The internal concentration represented by the critical body residue (CBR) is an ideal indicator to reflect the intrinsic toxicity of a chemical. Whilst some studies have been performed on CBR, the effect of exposure route on internal toxicity has not been investigated for fish. In this paper, acute toxicity data to fish comprising LC50 and LD50 val...

Assessing compounds for their pharmacological and toxicological properties is of great importance for industry and regulatory agencies. In this study an approach using open source software and open access databases to build screening tools for receptor-mediated effects is presented. The retinoic acid receptor (RAR), as a pharmacologically and toxic...

The assessment of data quality is a crucial element in many disciplines such as predictive toxicology and risk assessment. Currently, the reliability of toxicity data is assessed on the basis of testing information alone (adherence to Good Laboratory Practice (GLP), detailed testing protocols, etc.). Common practice is to take one toxicity data poi...