REMA (Spanish Network for alternative methods) hosts this year’s ecopa general assembly in Madrid, November 10th from 08:00 a.m. in Hotel Mercure Santo Domingo.

REMA is the national consensus platform of Spain that coordinates the initiatives of the Industry, the Administration, the Society and the Academia towards a reduction and a more rational use of laboratory animals promoting the development of alternative methods.

There are many members of REMA active in organisations such as ECVAM, ESTIV, EUROTOX, ERGATT, ICLAS, DGV, ILSI and OCDE.

This year the attention of the assembly is turned toward the election of the ecopa board, which is set at the end of the assembly.

The ecopa workshop 2012 will focus on the progress in strategies of alternatives to animal experimentation regarding the opportunities opened by the new directive 2010/63/UE on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes.

Here the promotion and new chances for 3Rs methods will be addressed from a global perspective. The difficulties of formal validation of regulatory procedures will be also subject of the main focus.

This workshop gives the audience also the opportunity to learn about the activities and projects of the national consensus platforms regarding to the identification and to the implementation of alternative strategies.

During the meeting, attendees will have the opportunity to share ideas and experiences with leaders and experts in alternatives to animal experiments coming from relevant EU member countries.

This workshop opens also to poster presentation, which gives young scientists as well as interested companies to share their ideas and to get expert input from attending audience.

The overall goal of the first stage of the project was to compare a series of established liver-based, kidney-based and lung-based in vitro models for their transcriptomics response to a set of prototypical carcinogenic compounds. As a result of these intensive testing efforts, the best performing models (i.e. in terms of mechanistic classifying power) have been selected for the liver work and for the kidney track. Regarding the former, the human hepatoma HepaRG® cell line came out as the most appropriate in vitro system.

In the second presently ongoing stage of carcinoGENOMICS, which is mainly aimed at testing the robustness of the selected experimental systems, HepaRG® cells, like in the first stage of the project, are challenged with another set of 15 test chemicals, of which 5 genotoxic carcinogens, 5 non-genotoxic carcinogens and 5 non-carcinogens.

In a parallel set of experiments, 3 compounds, already scrutinized in the first stage of the project, are simultaneously and independently tested in the HepaRG® cell system by 3 different laboratories (i.e. 3 partners of the project) in a blinded way in order to assess intra- and inter-laboratory reproducibility and transferability at the transcriptomics and metabolomics level.

All data generated by the involved laboratories are currently being analyzed and the final outcome of the liver work performed in the context of the second stage of carcinoGENOMICS will be shortly available. This will be discussed during the next Board meeting that will be held in Brussels on 16th and 17th of November 2011. A similar strategy is currently being followed for the selected kidney-based in vitro model.

The project will end in April 2012 and it is expected that at that time, two thoroughly characterized in vitro models for testing chemical-induced hepatic and renal carcinogenicity will be delivered. As such, this will form the solid basis for potential follow-up projects in area of in vitro carcinogenicity testing.

Currently within the ESNATS consortium, a test battery is being developed to assess different aspects of prenatal toxicity such as functional impairments and changes in the differentiation capacity after exposure to well selected reference compounds. More specifically, a test battery, consisting of 3-4 robust test systems, covering different critical time windows of neuronal cell differentiation, is being trained with prenatal toxicants covering various toxicological mechanisms and leading to the identification of a panel marker genes covering a wider range of prenatal toxicity.

The Sens-it-iv project officially terminated on 31 March 2011. During the last months, efforts were made to establish an e-learning programme supporting public access to the experimental knowledgebase on assays available within the Sens-it-iv toolbox. The e-learning prototype is available here.

The Scientific Congress - The Sens-it-iv Tool Box and Scientific Spin-offs will be held from 23-25 November 2011 at the Crowne Plaza Brussels Airport Hotel. The objective is to actively stimulate the transfer and implementation of knowledge acquired and of tools developed by the consortium in the areas of skin and respiratory sensitisation, through discussion, and a marketplace of innovation. A draft programme is available here. Registration is still possible!


... including all those who have made in-kind contributions to ecopa


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	ecopa Annual Conference 11-12 November 2011 Madrid, Spain

	Annual Meeting – In Vitro Toxicology Society November 8-9, 2011 Liverpool, UK Integrated Testing Strategies and their impact on the 3Rs November 9, 2011 Brussels, Belgium Cell Normalization Using Adhesive Micropatterns November 15, 2011 Heidelberg, Germany Scientific Congress - The Sens-it-iv Tool Box and Scientific Spin-offs November 23-25, 2011 Brussels, Belgium Stem Cell Programming & Reprogramming December 8 – 10, 2011 Lisbon, Portugal invitrom symposium December 12, 2011 Utrecht, The Netherlands

	Outcome of the public consultation on the draft scientific opinion Genotoxicity Testing Strategies.

	First Evaluation of the Use of "Non-animal" Methods to Meet the Requirements of the EU Chemicals Directive REACH Read more >
	ECHAs CoRAP specifies the substances that are to be evaluated over a period of three years. Read more >
	The latest version of the QSAR Toolbox Version 2.2 Read more >
	The NC3Rs Programme CRACK IT Read more >

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