The FP7-funded support action START-UP (Scientific and Technological Issues in 3Rs Alternatives Research in The Process of Drug Development and Union Politics) officially concluded in April. Developed on the initiative of ecopa and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel with collaboration from several national consensus platforms, the aim of START-UP was to identify and make recommendations to abolish bottlenecks in the 3Rs approach in pharmaceutical discovery and development.

The first START-UP workshop, on refinement, was held in Rome in February 2009. The second workshop, on reduction, has been held in July 2009 in Innsbruck, Austria. The third workshop, on replacement, was held in October 2009 in Budapest, Hungary. Final reports of these workshops have been compiled and supplied to the European Commission in April 2010, together with recommendations and road maps. This final document will be used to make a booklet about the START-UP project that will be distributed to the general public. [uploads]/Start-up_project_2007.pdf