SEURAT is a European research initiative with the long-term goal of achieving “Safety Evaluation Ultimately Replacing Animal Testing”.
In the first phase of the SEURAT initiative, the European Commission’s FP7 HEALTH programme and the European Cosmetics Association (Cosmetics Europe) support a cluster of six research projects representing the building blocks of a common strategy towards the development of solutions for the replacement of current repeated dose systemic toxicity testing in human safety assessment.
The coordination action “COACH” (“Coordination of projects on new approaches to replace current repeated dose systemic toxicity testing of cosmetics and chemicals”), has been set up to optimise cooperation between the cluster projects and to pave the way for future research.
COACH will constitute the secretariat of the cluster and will provide the following services:
• Facilitation of information exchange and collaboration between the different cluster projects
•Monitoring of progress towards the goals of the SEURAT initiative
•Preparation of the strategy for future research activities in an international context
•Collection, elaboration and dissemination of information, results and proposed future strategic research orientations to relevant stakeholder groups via: i) Organisation of annual workshops, ii) Publishing of annual strategy books, iii) Animation of a Scientific Expert Panel composed of 13 renowned scientists (the coordinators of the six research projects plus seven external experts) and iv) Preparation of strategic information material and targeted dissemination activities, including press relations
COACH work will be carried out by three partners (ARTTIC, JRC-ECVAM and University of Tübingen).