Over the past decades, science and society have increasingly started demanding a paradigm shift towards chemical safety and risk assessment without using animals. In addition to growing ethical concerns around the use of animal studies, there is the fundamental need to address all potential health effects relevant and specific to humans. Furthermore, the limited efficiency of animal-based testing (low throughput, high costs, insufficient laboratory capacity) will not be able to keep up the pace in ensuring the required protection of European citizens based on the sheer number of chemicals that require safety assessment.
The vision of the RISK-HUNT3R consortium is to establish a reliable and cost-effective chemical risk assessment strategy based entirely on non-animal approaches.
Scientific advances in in silico and in vitro testing, via so-called new approach methodologies (NAMs), have greatly increased the opportunities for application of NAMs in chemical safety testing.
