EU research activities in alternative testing strategies: current status and future perspectives

Alternative testing methods have become increasingly important within EU funding policy. The driving force behind this push for alternative testing methods is the urgent need for effective and robust alternative toxicity tests in order to make the tools available that are necessary to comply with the 3R-strategy (Replacement, Reduction, Refinement) that has been built into the European Cosmetic (Directive 2003/15/EC) and Chemical (REACH) (Regulation EC No 1907/2006) legislations. Indeed, a general European policy has to take into consideration the growing ethical concern of the public with respect to the use of experimental animals in the risk assessment process of consumer products. It is reasonable to believe that further development and strategic incorporation of recent progress in different areas of scientific research could lead to a better and more mechanistically based approach of studying toxicological problems. In line with this, the pharmaceutical industry is confronted with unexpected failures during the drug development process, even late during the clinical phase. These could not be properly anticipated. Reasons are in particular safety (hepatoand cardiotoxicity) as well clinical efficacy of the new chemical entities. Therefore, incorporation of novel alternative methods, human based and metabolically functional, is high on the priority list since the competitiveness of the European pharmaceutical industry is at stake. An overview of the different EU initiatives in the context of the 3Rs funded research is given in EUR22846 (European Commission 2008) and in the update EUR23886 (European Commission 2009). The EU offers four different funding schemes: (1) Collaborative/Integrated projects, which are medium/large-sized ambitious projects, usually involving several areas of expertise, (2) Specific Targeted Research Projects (STREP), representing smaller networks focussed on specific research issues, (3) SME-STREP, aimed at supporting research of smalland medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and (4) Specific Support Actions (SSA), for scientific training of personal as well as organization of conferences, workshops and expert meetings (EUR22846, EUR23886). The research networks fall into the categories of high-throughput techniques, specific toxicity tests and organization of forums and workshops. T. Vanhaecke (&) S. Snykers V. Rogiers Department of Toxicology, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Laarbeeklaan 103, 1090 Brussels, Belgium e-mail: tamara.vanhaecke@vub.ac.be