Kick-off Meeting

About 100 scientists from over 70 European organisations attended from 1st to 3rd March 2011 in Cascais (Portugal) the kick-off meeting of SEURAT-1, the European research initiative in the field of repeated dose systemic toxicity testing for the assessment of human safety.The SEURAT-1 research initiative is a public-private partnership co-funded by the European Commission and Cosmetics Europe. It includes six complementary research projects and a coordination and support action which started simultaneously in January 2011. The goal of the SEURAT-1 cluster is the development of a concept and corresponding long-term research strategy for future research and development work leading to pathway based human safety assessments in the field of repeated dose systemic toxicity testing of chemicals.The meeting kicked-off a long term research and development effort and the collaboration between the six complementary research projects, to ensure that a significant progress is achieved during the 5 years duration of the cluster.

During the event, the six research projects, namely Scr&Tox, HeMiBio, DETECTIVE, COSMOS, NOTOX and the servicing project ToxBank, presented their objectives, scientific approach, and expected outcome after the 5 years.

Eminent experts presented their views on various topics related to the planned research work, such as among others:

  • the mechanistic aspects of repeated dose toxicity
  • challenges and pitfalls in predicting toxicity
  • Safety assessment of cosmetic ingredients
  • the virtual liver approach,
  • standardisation of the culture of stem cell lines
  • data analysis using literature based-mining systems

The full programme of the kick-off meeting is available here. Parallel workshops were focused on the selection of test compounds and the management of the data generated by the research projects and their analysis.

  Contact points

The kick-off meeting led to lively debates, which outcomes feed the first volume of the SEURAT-1 Annual Report. It will be delivered in the form of a printed book in July 2011 and be the first of a series of six. The SEURAT-1 Annual Reports will altogether provide a comprehensive overview about research and development work aiming at the replacement of animal tests in the field of repeated dose systemic toxicity. The books will be available for download on this website or can be obtained by contacting the COACH Office.