Testing chemicals without animal use Risk assessment is a prerequisite to guarantee product safety. An EU-funded coordination and support action was established to oversee a range of projects aiming to develop methods for replacing animal-based chemical safety testing. Fundamental Research Health © Comstock, Thinkstock Identifying hazards and the toxic potential of chemical substances is fundamental to human health. This usually relies on a series of toxicity studies carried out in experimental animals. However, economical, ethical and scientific developments have motivated the scientific community to initiate the search for alternatives to animal experimentation. Central to this has been European legislations requiring the use of alternative methods to animal testing with the animal testing ban for cosmetic ingredients in 2009. The EU funded the SEURAT-1 research initiative that encompassed six individual research projects spread over 70 European universities, public research institutes and private companies. The principal aim was to establish a long-term research strategy that utilised animal-free innovative methods enabling pathway-based human safety assessments in the field of toxicity testing. The COACH (Coordination of projects on new approaches to replace current repeated dose systemic toxicity testing of cosmetics and chemicals) project served as a central scientific secretariat to SEURAT-1. It organised all interactions and activities and was the main entry point for all organisations, including the funding organisations. In addition, it facilitated information exchange and monitored progress of SEURAT-1 goals. Furthermore, the COACH project disseminated SEURAT-1 results and proposed future strategic research orientations to relevant stakeholder groups including the industry, academia and research policy makers. To achieve this, it organised annual workshops, published annual reports and informed the press on the significance of novel methods for toxicity testing that avoid animal experimentation. On a SEURAT-1 cluster level (including the six research projects supported by the COACH coordination and support action), new predictive toxicology tools and methods were developed that are relevant for regulatory decision making. The large portfolio of cutting-edge computational and in vitro tools provides the foundation and is expected to underpin new animal-free approaches in safety assessment. These efforts are pursued in EU-ToxRisk, a large scale project funded by the European Commission's Horizon 2020 programme, which is following on SEURAT-1 and more generally the European research efforts on alternative testing methods. Also, the SEURAT-1 framework provided the blueprint for applying the strategy to other chemical, toxicological and regulatory domains. Keywords Cosmetic, toxicity studies, animal testing, SEURAT-1, COACH
