We are thrilled to have been a part of the 23rd European Society of Toxicology In Vitro (ESTIV) Congress in Maastricht this past month! We had four days under the theme ‚Ensuring Safety, Advancing Science: Bridging to the Future with NAMs‘. This involved many intriguing discussions on how New Approach Methodologies are reshaping toxicology and reducing reliance on animal testing.
We are proud to have had two µOrganoLab members there to represent our team, and one of our members, Svenja Wingerter, was lucky enough to be given the L’Oréal travel grant to attend. Julia Roosz presented an informative poster on our work on patient-specfic models for tumor-immune cell interaction. This started some great conversations on the clinical use of NAMs in the field of toxicology! Svenja Wingerter gave an eye-opening talk on the new innovations of our Retina-on-Chip model. This generated a lot of buzz at the conference, and she ended up winning the ESTIV Best Oral Presentation Award!
Julia also had the pleasure of join in the Episkin Academy Training before the Congress began. It was a very informative and hands-on session where we could use the Episkin models to do skin and eye irritation testing in real-time!
Overall, ESTIV 2026 was a major success. A key takeaway from the many interesting sessions was that effective in vitro models are defined by their proximity to the research question at hand. NAMs only need to be as complex as the biological question requires rather than mimicing the physiology to the highest degree of complexity. With this in mind, the next challenge is increasing reproducability, transferability, throughput, and regulatory relevance. NAMs are here to stay in the field of toxicology now, and ESTIV 2026 confirmed that. We are greatful for all the interested discussions we had and are excited to see you all in Bratislava at ESTIV 2028!
