Lhasa Limited is excited to announce the release of Derek Nexus (version 6.5.0) and Sarah Nexus (version 5.1.0), featuring a significant enhancement to in silico genotoxicity assessment. The latest update introduces a unified, single-click genotoxicity prediction, combining mutagenicity and chromosome damage outputs from Derek Nexus and Sarah Nexus into a single, transparent workflow.
As a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to advancing science for public benefit, Lhasa Limited develops trusted, regulatory-aligned solutions that reduce the need for animal testing. These solutions support confident safety decisions across multiple industries, including pharmaceutical, agrochemical, and chemical.
A streamlined approach to genotoxicity prediction
Like the widely adopted ICH M7 prediction button, which integrates mutagenicity predictions from Derek Nexus and Sarah Nexus, the new genotoxicity prediction button consolidates in vitro mutagenicity and chromosome damage results into one workflow. The output is a clear, easy-to-use report, complete with transparent expert commentary, ensuring confidence, interpretability, and regulatory alignment.
This innovation improves the detection of genotoxic compounds by leveraging the complementary strengths of both tools, enhancing predictive accuracy and enabling efficient expert review. Reports are designed to support regulatory requirements such as ICH M7 (pharmaceuticals) and EFSA 2016 residue definition for dietary risk assessment (agrochemicals), facilitating assessments of pesticide metabolites, residues, and impurities.
Benefits of the new functionality
- Improved accuracy – Cross-model integration reduces false negatives and increases confidence in results.
- Enhanced usability – One-click predictions and guided expert commentary reduce manual effort and promote consistency across teams.
- Faster turnaround – Streamlined workflows shorten the time needed to generate and review reports, accelerating impurity risk assessments.
To access this functionality, members will require a Derek Nexus license and a Sarah Nexus license with the mutagenicity and chromosome damage model enabled.
Additional updates in this release
Alongside the new genotoxicity prediction workflow, the latest versions of Derek Nexus and Sarah Nexus also include:
- Updated training datasets with extended coverage across pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals, and related industries.
- Updated CPCA values and structures for over 420 N-nitrosamines, in line with the latest guidance from the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and Health Canada, enabling consistent and accurate read-across assessments across carcinogenic potency categories 1–5.
- Over 50 new expert arguments to support chromosome damage predictions.
Find out more
Current Derek Nexus and Sarah Nexus members are encouraged to explore the new features and can arrange a short training session with the Lhasa team to ensure they are gaining maximum value from their software.
For more information about how Derek Nexus and Sarah Nexus can be integrated into existing workflows, or to discuss the new genotoxicity prediction functionality, please get in touch.