Partners: Commission of the European Communities - Directorate General Joint Research Centre JRC (JRC)

ECVAM is a part of the IHCP of the DG JRC. ECVAM is the European Commission reference Centre for the development and validation of alternative testing methods to replace, reduce or refine the use of laboratory animals in biomedical sciences with an emphasis on toxicology assessment. ECVAM has experience in the culture of hESC and their differentiation into neural and cardiac cells. The main tasks of ECVAM in ESNATS are to develop teratogenicity testing based on hESC lines for drug safety screening), provide expertise in the design of the tests for modelling and predictive purposes, and validation. A close collaboration with other partners will allow proteomic and epigenetic analysis of the drug treated cells, in order to define toxicological patterns. ECVAM will bring expertise in the use of hESC for establishing in vitro embryotoxicity tests; supervisory expertise in the evaluation of the tests and development of statistical models, the development of in vitro tests according to the ECVAM’s Modular approach; and it will make recommendations for intended use of tests in a testing strategy.

Key staff involved in the project

Susanne Bremer, Dr. rer nat, is holding a PhD degree in biology obtained from the Charite University Hospital Berlin in Germany. After post-doctoral research at the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment in Germany, S. Bremer joint the Institute for Health & Consumer Protection (IHCP) at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) and became a team member of the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods (ECVAM) in 1995. Currently S. Bremer is coordinating ECVAM’s activities in the area of reproductive toxicity testing involving the validation on several tests for assessing endocrine disrupter activity of chemicals and the development of in vitro toxicity tests based on murine/ human embryonic stem cells. In particular, S.Bremer is interested in the use of alternative methods in testing batteries/strategies for complex human health endpoints Further information on ECVAM’s activity can be found at: http://ecvam.jrc.it/

Mandates:

1. The European Partnership for Alternative Approaches to Animal Testing (EPAA) is a joint initiative from the European Commission and a number of companies and trade federations active in various industrial sectors. S.Bremer is Member of the working group "Prioritisation, promotion and implementation of future research based on the application of the 3Rs."
2. OECD Validation Management Group for Non-Animal Testing
3. OECD expert group: Expert group on the extended one generation reproductive toxicity study
4. Member of the European projects: "ReProTect", "InVitroHeart", "ESNATS"

 Kinga Vojnits was born in Hungary in 1981, she finished her master degree in Biophysics in the University of Szeged in 2007. She has been admitted to a postgraduate Ph.D. training in Biochemistry, Biophysics, Molecular and Microbiology training program of the Faculty of Medicine, of University of Szeged in 2007. From December 2007 she is working with the embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines models comprising neural differentiation and developmental toxicology in the JRC.

Karin Gmeiner has received her professional eduction in the Vocational School for technicians in Medicine located in Regensburg/D.
Within her first position at the University Hospital / Regensburg she was employed in order to identify bacteria, parasites and viruses in blood cultures on a routinly basis. However, since her main interest was in questions related to applied research Karin Gmeiner was quickly involved in relevant actions of the University where she was responsible for an own subproject related to the identification of signalling pathways of various cytokines.
During her employment in the pharmaceutical sector she gained first practical experience in pharmacological and toxiocological tests aiming to develop high-throughput applications for the identification of drug candidates. These activities included cell culture work as well as cloning strategies. In 2007 she joint the ECVAM team in order to set up a quality system for in vitro toxicological tests and to support the hESC research activities of the Unit.

Roberto Ensenat-Waser, Ph.D., with a background in biochemistry and cell biology, obtained his Ph.D. in Stem Cells and Bioengineering at the Bioengineering Institute of the Miguel Hernandez University in Elche (Spain). The main focus of his work was in the isolation and characterization of somatic (SSC) and embryonic (ESC) stem cells, their differentiation towards cardiac and pancreatic cells for future therapeutic purposes and the quality and biological risk assessment of these differentiated products. He made a post-doc at the Cell Biology Department of the Institute for Biomedical Engineering of the RWTH in Aachen (Germany) aiming not only at the use of embryonic stem cells as in vitro model of haematopoiesis and establishment of the immune system (dendritic cells) but also at the isolation of hematopoietic precursors from bone marrow or cord blood in order to reprogram them into a pluripotent phenotype either by chemicals (TSA/AzaC), fusion with ESC or viral infection (iPS). Before joining in 2009 the In vitro Methods Unit of the Institute for Health and Consumer Protection (IHCP) at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre in Ispra (Italy), he worked at the Spanish Stem Cell Bank at Valencia Spain as scientific consultant supervising the establishment of new human stem cells lines and the research lines of the group.

Martina Klarič has graduated in biology from the University of Ljubljana in 2004. After training in the field of molecular biology at the Université Catholic de Louvain in Belgium she has worked for 4 yeas at the Jožef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana, Slovenia. Her research topic was the role of cathepsins in programmed cell death. During this time she has acquired experience in the field of cell culture of primary and tumour cells. In 2009 she has joined the Reproductive toxicity group of the In Vitro Methods Unit at the Joint Research Centre and she is working on the differentiation of hES cells in cardiomyocytes for the development of alternative test methods.