Shagun Krishna, PhD

Dr. Shagun Krishna is a Computational and In Vitro Toxicologist at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, leading initiatives to implement human-specific test methods that replace animal testing. Collaborating with agencies like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), NTP Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods (NICEATM), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), she advocates for non-animal research methodologies.

Before joining the Physicians Committee, Dr. Krishna was engaged at NICEATM, focusing on the Cardiovascular Health Effects Innovation Initiative. Here, she was pivotal in establishing an AI-assisted pipeline for cardiovascular toxicology, which included interpreting high-throughput screening data from the Tox21 and ToxCast programs, developing machine learning predictive models for hERG inhibition, and constructing QSAR models for cardiovascular toxicity. Dr. Krishna continues to build an evidence map of literature on environmental chemicals linked to cardiovascular toxicity, apply population-based IVIVE approaches using PBPK models, and develop an Adverse Outcome Pathway for atherosclerosis.

Dr. Krishna began her academic career by earning a master’s in Bioinformatics at Banaras Hindu University, India, and a PhD in Computational Biology and Cheminformatics from the CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute, India. Her doctoral research, focusing on cancer epigenetics, significantly reduced reliance on animal testing through computational predictions.

Dr. Krishna has been recognized with several awards including the Lush Prize for Young Researchers in 2022, HESI Cardiac Safety Committee Early Career Seminar Award Series 2022, and Computational Toxicology Specialty Section Yves Alarie Diversity Award for Trainees and Young Investigators in 2021 by the Society of Toxicology (SOT). She is a passionate advocate for cruelty-free research and a member of both the Society of Toxicology and the American Society for Cellular and Computational Toxicology. Dr. Krishna aspires to revolutionize toxicology with human-relevant, smarter, and compassionate scientific methods.