Instead, the scientists are working with human cell cultures to identify interactions with certain toxicologically relevant signaling pathways. But also invertebrate organisms such as fruit flies, water fleas, roundworms, as well as zebrafish and clawed frog embryos are used, which are considered alternatives to animal testing.

Information from genetics, genome, metabolism, and evolutionary development will be used to study the toxicity of hundreds of chemicals and investigate, how they interfere with biological they disrupt biological processes important to human health. The scientists involved expect that both chemical policy and chemical regulation will be significantly influenced as a result.

Fifteen European and U.S. institutions are involved, including from the German side the Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ), the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) as well as the University of Heidelberg. The University of Birmingham is the lead partner.

The EU is funding the project with 19.3 million euros. The project will run until 2026.

Source and further information:
https://www.ufz.de/index.php?de=36336&webc_pm=15/2021
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/centre-for-precision-toxicology/index.aspx