A virtual workshop, co-organized by EU-ToxRisk- Cosmetics Europe, will take place on 3 December 2021.
The workshop's content focuses on more recently developed and improved NAMs for risk assessment.
The event aims to provide a short overview of available NAM for measuring bioactivity, exposure, and hazard, and the associated levels of confidence in the conclusions derived from them; to show the advances made. The presentations aim to demonstrate the use NAMs in the risk assessment of cosmetics ingredients and how this approach could be translated into other regulatory frameworks.
The Eu-ToxRisk final Symposium took place in a hybrid format on 3-4 November 2021.
Participants could participate either physically (at the Square, Brussels) or via an ad-hoc digital platform. In this environment, people were able to access the entire programme (including the poster session and the visit of the industrial booths.
The objectives of the meeting were to deliver a final critical assessment of the EU-ToxRisk project, dissemination of its resulting key outcomes and its impact in the implementation of new technologies and approaches (part I), with a focus on industry (part II) and regulatory needs (part III).
A rich poster session was organized, covering the primary outcome and impact of the project. The event concluded with the kick-off meeting of the newly formed ASPIS research cluster (Part IV).
All presentations, as well as the video recording of the Conference, will be made available on the event website (Under the section Project Results).
The virtual EU-ToxRisk workshop on "Application of a science-driven approach to solve the needs of regulatory and industry communities in the implementation of NAM-supported read-across in regulatory dossiers" took place on 27-28 October 2021 (2-6 PM CEST).
The event aimed to provide a platform for facilitating the discussion among stakeholders interested in the implementation of NAMs in RAx-based regulatory dossiers. Regulatory and industry stakeholders were asked to discuss real examples of successful and failed RAx submissions, focusing on the REACH regulatory framework, where RAx attempts often fail.
A workshop report is in preparation.
A new toolbox for citizens' protection: implementing science into policy
(virtual, 9 September 2021)
The Horizon 2020 toxicology programs PATROLS and EU-ToxRisk organised a workshop to highlight how the tools and methods developed within the two projects can be used to deliver the EU's chemicals strategy for sustainability. The chemicals strategy for sustainability towards a toxic-free environment is part of the European Commission's zero pollution ambition, which is a key commitment of the Europe Green Deal.
This virtual workshop offered an opportunity for dialogue between scientists working on next generation tools and policymakers. For more details, please read the webinar report.
From 10-13 February 2020, the EU-ToxRisk project held its 6th General Assembly meeting together with its 3rd Industry Stakeholders Meeting, in Egmond aan Zee (NL).
The programme of Industry Stakeholders Meeting is available for download here.
If you want to be informed about the upcoming EU-Toxrisk Industry Stakeholder Meetings and your are not yet on the project's distribution list, please contact the .
Copyright Mühle/IfADo
Wiebke Albrecht, a PhD student at the Leibniz Research Centre for Working Environment and Human Factors (IfADo) received the “Animal Welfare Research Prize 2019” by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (23.10.2019). She received the price for the publication “Prediction of human drug-induced liver injury (DILI) in relation to oral doses and blood concentrations” (Archives of Toxicology, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00204-019-02492-9), several EU-ToxRisk work packages contributed to the publication as well.
For more information please see the press release of IfADo here.
From 12-14 Feb. 2019, the EU-ToxRisk project held its 5th General Assembly (GA) meeting, together with its 2nd Industry Stakeholders Meeting. Similar to the previous GA meeting, this year's edition will also take place in Egmond aan Zee (NL).
Day-1 focused on the learnings from the EU-ToxRisk Phase-1 Case Studies and the conceptual frameworks of the most recent Phase-2 Case Studies. Day-2 was devoted to scientific highlights from EU-ToxRisk and discussions on the overall project progress. The last event day was restricted to EU-ToxRisk project members and dedicated to various work sessions and group discussions.
Altogether, some 120 people - including project members, advisory board members and external industry stakeholders - attended the event which was very successfull with interesting presentations, fruitful discussions, and instructive poster sessions. A very warm thank you to all external stakeholders who joined the project for this get-together. Your feedback and questions were highly appreciated.
If you want to be informed about the upcoming Industry Stakeholder Meetings and your are not yet on the project's distribution list, please contact the .
In July 2018, the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing-Europe and the EU-ToxRisk project co-organized a three-day Think-Tank meeting on the Internationalisation of Read Across as Validated New Approach Method (NAM) for Regulatory Toxicology.
More than 20 international Read-Across experts from various regulatory agencies (e.g. EURL-ECVAM, EFSA, NIH, OECD), industry, and academia met to discuss the necessary steps which to effectively boost the standardization of the Read-Across method and to expand its use and acceptance among international regulatory authorities.
The debate tackled several crucial aspects of the Read-Across approach, e.g. the urgent need of harmonization of the method among the different national agencies, and the peculiarities of the method in the prospective of a standard validation. The discussion stressed out the necessity to build a major confidence in the method among the regulators, also by integration with other NAMs. The workshop will result in a meeting report which will also contain the final recommendations pointed out by the group and which is planned to be released in spring 2019.
The EU-ToxRisk project was represented by several partners in two different, EU-ToxRisk specific sessions:
“EU-ToxRisk: status quo of the Horizon 2020 flagship project on non-animal toxicology” (session abstract)
Session line-up:
The EU-ToxRisk project: an update and future perspectives, B. van de Water (UL)
NAMs in EU-ToxRisk, M. Leist (UKN)
Industry perspective on NAMs - application in hazard assessment and read across, H. Kamp (BASF)
The EU-ToxRisk read-across strategy S. Escher
Practical application of AOPs in chemical safety assessment: mitochondrial toxicity and agrochemicals, B. van de Water (UL)
Physiologically based pharmacokinetics as part of an integrated approach to testing and assessment, I. Gardner (SimCyp/Certara)
RNA-Seq analysis of EU-ToxRisk cell models, R. Gupta (UM)
“Mechanism-based mitochondrial toxicity testing for chemical safety evaluation”
Session line-up:
- Target tissue specific activation of transcriptional programmes by mitotoxicants, M. Leist (UKN)
- Respirometric Screening and Characterization of Mitochondrial Toxicities Induced by ToxCast Chemicals, S.O. Simmons (U.S. EPA)
- Quantitative assessment of mitochondrial toxicity and downstream cellular perturbations in Adverse Outcome Pathways, B. van de Water (UL)
- Mitochondrial toxicity and oxidative stress: Defining the tipping point between adaptive and adverse effects for consumer safety risk assessment, A. White (UNILEVER)
EU-ToxRisk also presented a poster on the Development and validation of computational models for predicting oxidative stress responses using comprehensive series of drug-like compounds (M. Pastor, UPF) and had a booth in the exhibition area.
To visit the conference website, please click here.
The partners of the EU-ToxRisk project contributed with a total of 5 talks to the programme of the EFSA 2018 conference, held in Parma (IT), from 18 to 21 Sep. 2018:
DAY-2
1. “Holistic approach to human health risk assessment – is the current approach fit for purpose?”, S. H. Bennekou (DEPA)
2. “New approach methods (NAM) in toxicology for mechanism-based hazard assessment”, M. Leist (UKN)
3. “Integrating pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics in AOPs for next generation risk assessments”, F. Bois (INERIS)
4. "EU-ToxRisk: Towards new chemical safety testing strategies using new approach methods", B. van de Water (UL)
DAY-3
5. "Software beats animal testing at predicting toxicity of chemicals", T. Hartung (JHSPH)
To check out the full event programme, please visit the conference website.
Celebrating 10 years of open science, the WikiPathways team, a collaboration between the Bioinformatics department at Maastricht University and Alex Pico’s group at Gladstone, hosted a 3-day summit on pathway tools, resources and research, featuring seminars and hands-on workshops.
The summit was held from 8-10 Oct. 2018 in San Francisco (USA), and it was organised as a collaboration between Alex Pico’s group at Gladstone (UK) and Chris Evelo’s team at Maastricht University (NL).
Each day of the event was themed to serve various communities of users and contributors working with biological pathways.
EU-ToxRisk was represented at the 18th International Conference on (Q)SAR in Environmental and Health Sciences (QSAR 2018), which took place from 11-15 June in Bled, Slovenia. It is a great pleasure for the project to announce that, Domenico Gadaleta and Cosima Toma, both from the EU-ToxRisk partner Mario Negri (IRFMN), won the Taylor & Francis award for the best posters presented by students for their posters “R and KNIME integration for QSAR development of Plasma Protein Binding” and “Exploiting ToxCast data to develop structure-activity relationships (QSAR) for molecular initiating events of adverse outcome pathways leading to hepatic steatosis”. Both posters referred to work realised within the EU-ToxRisk project.
For more information about the conference, please follow this link.
In June 2018, the EU-ToxRisk project and Joint Research Centre (JRC) formally agreed to collaborate in the field of chemical safety assessment with the general objective of providing an effective interface between the research activities and regulatory aspects and to translate the research results into validated test methods and strategies fit for regulatory purpose.
EU-ToxRisk was present again at the annual SOT meeting in San Antonio, which took place from the 11th until the 15th of March 2018. EU-ToxRisk members organized and participated in two scientific sessions on read-across approaches and mitochondrial toxicity, respectively. In addition, there was an EU-ToxRisk satellite meeting “EU-ToxRisk: 2 year Review and Outlook” which was very well attended. For the duration of the conference EU-ToxRisk also maintained a booth, where interested parties could find out more information about the project.
You can find more information about the SOT 2018 on the event's website.
The 2017 edition of the OpenTox Euro conference was held in Basel (Switzerland) from 21-23 Nov. 2017 and brought together a cross-section of top scientists, regulators and data solution providers.
A session on high-content imaging was chaired by EU-ToxRisk project coordinator Bob van der Water from Leiden University.
For more information, please visit the event website.
This workshop, organized by CAAT, brought together about 20 selected experts from academia, industry and regulatory bodies for a 2.5 day meeting involving intellectual exchange, brainstorming and conceptual work in an atmosphere of openness and objectivity.
It intended to bring experts in field of DART, including relevant EUToxRisk partners (e.g. BASF SE), to discuss functionality and fitness-for-purpose of promising non-animal DART approaches from academic, industrial and regulatory points of view.
The first EU-ToxRisk workshop on data handling took place on 27-28 April 2017 in Konstanz, Germany.
The event intended to implement an understanding of the importance to having data stored in a consistent and useful format.
The EU-ToxRisk consortium was represented at the SOT 2017 which was held on 12-16 March 2017 in Baltmore, USA. A joint discussion took take place with representatives from Tox21.
You can find more information about the SOT 2017 on the event's website.
The first EU-ToxRisk Winter School was held on 20-21 February 2017, in Sitges, Spain. This was followed by the third EU-ToxRisk General Assembly (GA) meeting on the 22nd-24th February.
The EU-ToxRisk project and the Toxicology in the 21st Century (Tox21) initiative in the US have agreed to collaborate on efforts to reduce the use of animals and achieve more efficient chemical safety assessments.
A total of 28 representatives from both projects gathered in a workshop held in Mainz (Germany) on the 12th-14th September 2016 to initiate collaboration across areas of mutual interest within the field of risk assessment.
You can find further information in the EU-ToxRisk-Tox21 joint Press Release.
The EU-ToxRisk AOP workshop took place from the 19th-22nd September at the University of Vienna. The aim of the workshop was to initiate the building of a set of AOPs for the EU-ToxRisk project and to ensure that these AOPs are built in consideration of the different EU-ToxRisk case studies. Participants involved PIs, Postdocs and Ph.D. students working on the project, while experts from the OECD, the RIVM, the EPA, the University of Vienna and the JRC were providing the workshop training activities.
The workshop report is available here.
The EU-ToxRisk-Tox21 joint workshop took place on 13-14 September 2016 in Mainz, Germany. The event brought together the Principal Investigators from both projects to discuss areas of practical cooperation, complementarity and exchange, particularly with regard to the work performed in the case studies and in terms of specific Work Package activities.
Members of the EU-ToxRisk consortium presented their latest research findings at the EUROTOX conference in Seville, Spain (4th-7th September 2016). A dedicated EU-ToxRisk panel was planned, where the participating members of the consortium had the opportunity to disseminate information regarding the project.
First EU-ToxRisk Summer School was held between the 27th and the 29th June 2016, in the Dutch seaside resort of Egmond aan Zee. This was followed by the second EU-ToxRisk General Assembly (GA) meeting on the 29th June until the 1st July. The third EU-ToxRisk GA meeting is planned for February 2017.
EU-ToxRisk members participated in the ECHA workshop held in Helsinki, Finland on 19-20 April 2016.
EU-ToxRisk members participated in this month’s SOT meeting held in New Orleans, LA, from the 13th-17th March 2016.
This workshop presented and discussed the new Good Read-across Practice guidance and other current initiatives for the benefit of past and future REACH registrants.
Key speakers included EU-ToxRisk consortium members such Thomas Hartung (JHSPH) and Marcel Leist UKN). The topics covered the 2016 Good Read-across practice guidance, Ambit tool, Seurat-1 case studies, EU-ToxRisk, and the ECHA Read-across Assessment Framework (RAAF).
You can find more information here.
This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 681002
