Vitis Regulatory attends Eurotox 2023

Vitis Regulatory was pleased to attend Eurotox 2023 from 10th to 13th September at the GR Congress Centre, Ljubljana, Slovenia. 

This year’s theme was “Toxicology – multidisciplinary science leading to safer and sustainable life” and focussed on the many different aspects of toxicology affecting modern life.  It featured keynote lectures on the opioid crisis, mechanistic approaches to toxicology, and the impact of ciguatera in fish poisoning. Outside of these keynote lectures there were discussions centred on the future of toxicology including whether the exposome (consideration of lifetime environmental exposure)  will drastically change the practice of toxicology.

One of the hot topics of the conference was New Approach Methodologies (NAMs).  There were several posters and presentations on the topic, with industry and regulatory bodies including EFSA and ECHA leading discussions on the future of toxicology focussing on alternative means to animal testing. ECHA highlighted that the future of toxicology relies on NAMs instead of animal testing, indicating that that 90% of skin irritation, skin sensitisation, and eye irritation tests had used in vitro methodologies instead of in vivo animal tests. ECHA also announced the upcoming release of their collaborative work with European chemicals industry body CEFIC, which demonstrates the reproducibility metabolomics. This discussion highlighted the use of “omics” as a way forward in regulatory testing.

It is great to see the support of the regulatory authorities for NAMs continuing and the supporting research accelerating. It was a very interesting few days and enjoyable to catch up with a variety of scientific colleagues in a charming city.  We look forward to seeing colleagues in Copenhagen for Eurotox 2024!