EU-funded project to hunt out predictive biomarkers for chemical toxicity: Scientific approach to avoid mammalian tests

摘要

A new EU-funded project called 'PrecisionTox' has been launched to identify chemical toxicity pathways in humans using tests on five model species of non-sentient organisms, including fruit flies and water fleas. PrecisionTox is a €19.3m five-year project funded by Horizon 2020. It aims to predict adverse health effects in humans by identifying molecular biological markers (biomarkers) of key events in toxicity pathways, without using mammalian tests. Biomarkers are measurable indicators of toxicity, including changes in the regulation of genetic and metabolic pathways triggered by chemicals.