Venomous crustacean from Mayan underwater caves provides new drug candidates

08-Oct-2024 - Zootoxins affect a wide range of physiological processes and are therefore of great interest for drug research. An international study led by Björn von Reumont of Goethe University Frankfurt has identified novel toxins from the cave-dwelling underwater crustacean Xibalbanus tulumensis that ...

BASF to research on alternatives to animal testing on behalf of the European Chemicals Agency

Number of animal experiments required for safety assessments of chemical substances to be further reduced

07-Feb-2024 - The European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) has contracted a consortium that includes BASF to conduct scientific studies on the reliability and relevance of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) as alternatives to animal testing and to promote the use of such methods in the future. The aim of the contract ...

Assessing the toxicity of micro- and nanoplastics to ecosystems

Smaller is not necessarily less toxic

12-Oct-2023 - For most pollutants, there are standard protocols for assessing the risks to ecosystems. Despite the increasing concern about the harmful effects of micro- and nanoplastics (MNPs), so far, there exist no harmonised guidelines for testing the ecotoxicity of MNPs. An international research team ...

Where do toxins from tobacco attack DNA?

In the future, this could make it easier than ever to determine the safety of many chemical substances

24-Feb-2023 - It is known that toxins in tobacco smoke can change our DNA – but where exactly in the genome they do this has been a mystery. A new approach developed by researchers at ETH Zurich now brings light into the darkness. In the future, this could make it easier than ever to determine the safety of ...

Using light to switch drugs on and off

Photopharmacology is a new field of medicine that is predicted to have a great future

22-Feb-2023 - Scientists at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have used the Swiss X-ray free-electron laser SwissFEL and the Swiss Light Source SLS to make a film that could give a decisive boost to developing a new type of drug. They made the advance in the field of so-called photopharmacology, a discipline ...

Controlling the effect of drugs more precisely

International research team from pharmacy and chemistry develops an estrogen that can be switched on and off

28-Oct-2022 - Unwanted side effects in the body, drug resistance or environmentally harmful residues - drugs not only cure diseases or relieve pain, but can also have negative effects on people or the environment. This could be reduced by medical compounds that are only active at the site of an illness in the ...

Unprecedented dynamic-range resolution useful for examining impact of environmental pollutants on cells and tissues

Full-body synchrotron imaging of roundworms reveals nanoparticle accumulation

02-Jun-2022 - Scientists working at DESY’s PETRA III light source have been able to generate the first synchrotron-based X-ray map of the whole body of an organism at such a high resolution that contaminants could be detected at the individual cell level. The research team was able to identify cerium ...

Animal-free safety testing of novel medicines, chemicals, and consumer products

Spin-off from the Leiden University Medical Center opens US office and production facility to accelerate growth

21-Mar-2022 - Toxys BV, a Dutch biotech company that offers a broad spectrum of innovative in vitro toxicology solutions for the safety assessment of novel medicines, (agro)chemicals, cosmetics, and food ingredients, announces the opening of a sales office in New York (NY) and a production facility in ...

Green chemistry needs more green toxicology

Sustainable bioeconomy: Development of environmentally friendly bio-shampoos and plant protection agent technologies

16-Feb-2022 - With the early assessment of sustainable, newly developed chemicals and products it is possible to assess a potential risk of toxic substances being released at a later point in product cascades. This has been revealed in a proof-of-concept study jointly coordinated by Goethe University Frankfurt ...

World's first toxicology testing strategy without animal testing adopted by OECD

Success for long-standing collaboration between BASF and Givaudan to develop and validate alternative methods

30-Jun-2021 - The world’s first toxicology testing strategy without animal testing has been approved by the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). The testing strategy consists of three so-called alternative methods. They can be used to predict whether a substance causes allergic ...