EBTC EFSA workshop on AOPs

2-3 October 2019. EBTC organized, together with the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), a two-day expert meeting on applying evidence-based methods to the development, assessment and implementation of adverse outcome pathways (AOPs).

The meeting, which took place in Parma (Italy), was a follow-up to the one-day workshop that EBTC organized in collaboration with the GRADE Working Group on 12 June in Hamilton (Canada).

The meeting in Parma was intended to continue and deepen the discussions started in Hamilton. To that end, the meeting revolved around three related themes:

• Literature-based AOP development
• Assessing certainty in AOPs, and
• Integrating certainty in AOPs and non-animal evidence into decision frameworks.

38 experts from different backgrounds participated in the workshop. After short general and thematic introductions, the themes were explored in detail in a series of break-out sessions.

The overall conclusion of the workshop was that evidence-based approaches do have a high potential to contribute to the development, assessment and implementation of AOPs, but that to optimize that contribution more in-depth research is required.

The results of the workshop will be be summarized in a workshop report and will form the basis for several follow-up manuscripts.

The workshop was supported by t4, the transatlantic think tank for toxicology, which is sponsored by the Doerenkamp-Zbinden Foundation.

EBTC sponsors SR seminar at ISEE 2019

25 August 2019. EBTC sponsored a seminar at the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology annual conference, held this year in Utrecht (NL).

The objective of the seminar was (a) to show, using data collected by the journal Environment International, where systematic review teams are facing particular challenges with SR methods, and (b) present a series of talks by methods specialists giving advice on how to overcome these challenges.

About 30 people participated in the seminar, which covered issues including good practice in risk of bias assessment, using GRADE to assess the certainty in the results of a systematic review, and how protocol peer-review and publication can help minimise risk of unsuccessful SR projects.

New publications with EBTC authors

van Luijk et al. (2019) Establishing a health-based recommended occupational exposure limit for nitrous oxide using experimental animal data – A systematic review protocol. Environmental Research

EBTC YouTube Channel

To help people catch up with the various workshops we organise, EBTC has started recording the talks and presentations at our events and posting them on our new YouTube channel. You can check it out here. (So far, we have uploaded the talks from the EBTC/GRADE pre-meeting in Hamilton; the talks from Parma should be coming soon.)

Board Membership Update

We are pleased to announce that Dr Daniele Wikoff, a long-time contributor to the EBTC work and Co-Chair of our Scientific Advisory Council, has been elected to serve on the Board of Trustees. We are looking forward to her strategic input at this level. Thank you, Daniele!

Upcoming events

We are really pleased to announce that we were successful in submitting a session proposal to AAAS 2020, on how artificial intelligence could revolutionise the storage, distribution and use of scientific knowledge in toxicology and environmental health research. The full program has been announced; our session is here. We hope to see you there!

We have also either co-led, or are involved in, several accepted sessions at SOT 2020 (15-19 March 2020, Anaheim, CA). We will circulate more information about this as the program is finalised.