Last week marked an inspiring milestone for the ASPIS cluster, with two major events taking place back-to-back: EUROTOX 2025 and the ASPIS Open Symposium. Together, they brought scientists, regulators, and industry representatives into one space to share progress, strengthen collaboration, and discuss the future of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) in regulatory science.
EUROTOX 2025: Bringing science closer to regulatory use
At EUROTOX, RISK-HUNT3R and ASPIS partners showcased advances in NAMs and their role in shaping the future of risk assessment.
• A dedicated session on assessing and communicating uncertainty in Next Generation Risk Assessment (NGRA) sparked valuable discussion on how to make emerging methods more transparent, reliable, and regulatory-ready.
• Another session on advanced human liver test systems highlighted how cutting-edge in vitro models can improve drug and chemical safety evaluation while reducing reliance on animal testing.
These sessions underlined both the scientific potential and the ethical importance of transitioning to modern testing strategies.
ASPIS Open Symposium
Following EUROTOX, the ASPIS Open Symposium brought together RISK-HUNT3R, PrecisionTox, and ONTOX for two days of interactive sessions. Here, the focus was on building momentum around new tools, case studies, and collaborative initiatives to accelerate the regulatory uptake of NAMs.
A particular highlight was the discussion on ASPA, the interactive workflow developed within RISK-HUNT3R to operationalize NGRA, as a key example of how structured workflows can guide users through the NGRA process and support regulatory integration.
Best Poster Award winners for their outstanding contributions:
Eliska Kuchovska (ONTOX; IUF – Leibniz Research Institute for Environmental Medicine) – Regulation of key neurodevelopmental processes by disease pathways and nuclear receptors in a human Neurosphere Assay
Shaleen Glasgow (PrecisionTox; University of Birmingham) – Comparative transcriptomics of Daphnia and Bio-medical models for the evolutionary conservation of a gene network for toxicant associated fatty liver disease
Eike Cöllen (RISK-HUNT3R; University of Konstanz) – Rapid identification of neurotoxicity alerts for multiple compound classes by high-throughput single cell Ca2+ assays
By joining forces, ASPIS projects are moving NAMs from the research bench into regulatory practice, shaping a system that is more reliable, more human-relevant, and less dependent on animal testing.
First ASPA Paper Submitted!
Great news: the very first paper on the ASPA workflow has just been submitted. This is a big milestone for the project and for advancing NGRA in practice.
While under review, you can already explore the preprint here: https://zenodo.org/records/16993943
