The IK4-GAIKER technological centre, along with the IVTIP European Platform (In Vitro Testing Industrial Platform) is organizing a congress on the 19th April on the "Safety Assessment of Nanomaterials: Current Status and Challenges Ahead".
International Experts Debate on the Safety of Nanomaterials in the Basque Country.
The event, which will be held at the centre's headquarters at the of the Bizkaia Technology Park, will aim at delving deeper into the advances of nanotoxicology as a new toxicology discipline and will count on experts from all around the globe who will present the latest advancements as well as future challenges in this field.
Nanomaterials have new physical properties which can improve the performance of the materials they are incorporated with. Nevertheless, materials at a nanometric scale can also present toxicological characteristics which are different from the same substances at conventional scales which can pose a risk to human health and the environment.
The congress will deal with aspects related with the quality of the current studies in nanotoxicology, with special emphasis on chapters related with the validation of in vitro tests versus in vivo, and will debate the new in vitro models of the physiological barriers which will allow for the evaluation of the safety and efficiency of the nanomaterials.
The IVTIP brings together research centres like Fraunhofer and TNO and companies from the cosmetics, pharmaceutical and chemical industries like L'Oreal, Henkel, Novo Nordisk and Philip Morris, among others. This platform works on the search for in vitro systems which allow for a safe evaluation of new compounds and substitutes trials with animals to avoid their use and sacrifice.