Safety assessment of chemicals and pharmaceuticals based on human biology
People are daily exposed to lots of different chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Safety assessment is necessary to protect us against the possible dangers of these substances. To date, safety assessment makes use of laboratory animals but this is increasingly being criticised. From a societal point of view there is a growing interest in animal welfare. From a scientific point of view the accuracy of animal studies to predict toxicity in humans is limited. In addition, current animal testing regimes do not reflect human-relevant scenarios, such as differences in susceptibility due to age, sexe, timing of exposure, or disease state. Esmeralda is project manager of two projects on the transition to an animal-free safety assessment.
Virtual Human Platform for Safety Assessment (VHP4Safety)
Esmeralda is project manager of the 11.4 M Euro NWO NWA-ORC project 'Virtual Human Platform for Safety Assessment.' The mission of the VHP4Safety project is to improve the prediction of the potential harmful effects of chemicals and pharmaceuticals based on a holistic, interdisciplinary definition of human health. The project will accelerate the transition from animal-based testing to innovative safety assessment based solely on data from humans. More information on the VHP4Safety project can be found on the VHP4Safety website.
Animal-Free Assays for endocrine disruption – from science to Regulatory Acceptance (AFARA)
A recently awarded project from NWO, within the Dutch Research Agenda (NWA) 'Non-animal models: acceptance and implementation' programme is called Animal-Free Assays for endocrine disruption – from science to Regulatory Acceptance (AFARA). This project will determine how the use of non-animal models for testing Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs) can be improved as well as their regulatory acceptance. Even though several parties are committed to a transition to an animal-free safety assessment and countless animal-free models are developed, these models have only been implemented to a very limited extent. The AFARA project studies the process of acceptance and implementation of existing animal-free models in the assessment of the safety of substances for humans with a focus on EDCs. Esmeralda is the project manager of AFARA.