Consortium to study NAMs

ECHA has contracted a consortium led by the Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology & Experimental Medicine (ITEM) to conduct scientific studies on the reliability and relevance of new approach methodologies (NAMs) as alternatives to animal testing and to promote their use. This will run for six years, with €4.2 million in ECHA funding.

The stated aim is to get additional NAMs accepted by regulatory authorities, focusing on molecular biological technologies, such as transcriptomics, metabolomics and toxicokinetics, and thereby further reduce the number of animal studies conducted as part of safety assessments for chemical substances.

The research partners will support ECHA in developing guidelines that can be used to reliably predict the properties of substances for which there is not yet sufficient safety information, in ways similar to how grouping and read-across are already used. A major focus is on evaluating the informative value of ‘omics’ in chemical safety assessments.

ITEM, Michabo Health Science of the UK and BASF Metabolome Solutions are coordinating the work. Other partners include BASF’s for experimental toxicology and ecology department, the University of Birmingham and two UK biotechs, BioClavis and Novogene Europe.