Contributions of the Humane Science Foundation to
the FIGON Dutch Medicines Days
The Dutch Medicines Days (Nederlandse Geneesmiddelendagen)
of the FIGON (Federatie Innovatief Geneesmiddelen Onderzoek Nederland)
gather yearly. Its audience consists of about 800 pharmaceutical
researchers coming from industry, knowledge institutes and university.
From 2009-2015, we have organized sessions and invited lecturers from all over the world
in order to inform pharmaceutical researchers about
replacement of animal testing and the latest developments
in innovative and animal-free technology.
Here we provide an overview of subjects and presenting organizations :
2015 Key Note Lectures “On the Frontiers of Pharmaceutical Research”
* Increasing biological relevance in vitro: From single microtissues to micro-physiological systems (InSphero, Switzerland)
* Toxicogenomics-based approaches for improving drug safety assessment (University Maastricht)
* Towards (pre)-clinical trials on a chip and personalized treatment (Institute for human Organ and Disease Model Technologies, the Netherlands)
2015 Session “Tissue Engineering in Pharmaceutical Research”
* Can 3D-bioprinting aid the development of more predictive in vitro testing models? (University
of Utrecht)
* Novel technologies to studying pharmacological approaches for kidney repair (University of Utrecht)
* 3D Bioprinted human organ models for drug safety assessment: the exVive3D Human Liver Model
(Organovo, USA)
2014 Session “Innovative and Animal-Free Technology Heading for
Personalized Medicine” (with ZonMW and NvF)
* Implementing in vitro models (University of Groningen)
* In vitro data combined with human disease data to improve toxicological risk assessment (TNO)
* Organoids, the new patient specific model system (HUB - Hubrecht Organoid Technology)
* Advanced Imaging Technologies (Radbout University Nijmegen)
* Regulatory acceptance of testing strategies using no or less animals (CBG-MEB)
* Current and future prospects of ZonMW - More knowledge with fewer animals programme (ZonMW)
2013 Member Judging Committee “Lef in het Lab Oevreprijs 2013”
* Awarded to Prof. Dr. H. Schellekens (University of Utrecht)
2012 Key Note Lecture “Replacing Dogs in Animal Testing”
* Drug models that do not bark (John Hopkins University)
2012 Session “ Reduction, Refinement, Replacement, Review ”
* Outlook and Challenges of 4R’s in Animal Testing (Humane Science Foundation)
2011 Key Note Lecture “E-science and in Silico Simulations”
* The role of E-science in drug discovery and development: pattern recognition, guided drug design,
multidisciplinary research teams and analysis of the huge piles of data (eScience Center)
2011 Session “Assuring Safety Without Animal Testing” (with NV- Toxicologie and NVFW)
* Risk assessment of liver toxicity without animal data: towards an integrated in vitro-in silico approach combining toxicogenomics, in vitro molecular toxicology and target tissue exposure modeling. A case study on paracetamol (University Groningen)
* Models to predict importance of transporters in drug-induced toxicity (Radbout University Nijmegen)
* Humanized yeast to study interplay between cytochrome P450 and glutathione S-transferase in drug toxicity (Free University Amsterdam)
* Prediction of exposure to paracetamol and its metabolites in vivo and in vitro based on in vitro data only (University Groningen)
* Hazard identification using transcriptomics: a proof of principle with paracetamol (Maastricht University)
* Integrated in vitro-in silico approach to predict in vivo developmental toxicity (University of
Wageningen)
* Identification of novel potential biomarkers for acetaminophen-induced acute liver injury in urine (Radbout University Nijmegen)
2011 Tutorial “Human Tissue: Successful applications in Pharmaceutical Research ” (with NV-Toxicologie)
* The use of human-derived cellular in vitro systems: possibilities and limitations (University of Utrecht)
* Human in vitro models in drug development. A giant leap forward or only the first steps? (Drug Development and In Vitro Toxicology)
* Human Lung Tissue (TNO)
* Human Liver Fibrosis (University Groningen)
* Human Lung Tissue (University Groningen)
* Human Brain Tissue (Netherlands Brain Bank)
2011 Tutorial “Human Tissue: Daily Practice and Practice Issues”
* Benchmark European Union (European Commission)
* Code of conduct (Federa)
* Public and patient perspectives on the use of human tissue (Rathenau Institute)
* Practical issues and considerations on the use of human tissue (University Groningen)
* Outlook (Dutch Society for the Protection of Animals)
* Round table discussion
2010 Key Note Lecture “Drug Safety without Animal Testing”
* The Innovative Medicines Initiative: boosting research on drug safety across Europe (IMI Europe)
2010 Session “Frontiers in Drug Development without Animal Testing”
* Perspectives on innovation in drug development: towards a novel trajectory (Humane Science Foundation)
* Lost in translation? Systems science, new insights for translational efficacy and safety development (TNO)
* What you cannot do with animal experiments involving characterisation of ADME, and you can do with in silico simulations based on human data (Simcyp UK)
* Microdosing in humans - phase 0 (TNO)
* Toll like receptor ligation of human intestinal epithelial cells alters the innate and adaptive immune response in a novel developed in vitro transwell coculture model (University of Utrecht)
2010 Tutorial “Combined Omics Technologies in Drug Development” (with the Netherlands Genomics Initiative)
* Genomics and integrative-omics - Disease prediction by genomics: does your genome tell it all? (University of Utrecht NPC)
* Proteomics - (Off-)Target validation by chemical proteomics (University of Utrecht NPC)
* Metabolomics - What does it bring to drug development? (LACDR Leiden NMC)
* Toxicogenomics - More knowledge, better tests, less animal testing (University Maastricht NTC)
2010 Tutorial “Cheminformatics” (with Platform Farmacochemie and Pharma Top Institute Leiden)
ICT Demonstrations:
* Using intelligent information to accelerate drug discovery (Thomson Reuters UK)
* Improved Ligand Design: teaming up medicinal and computational chemists (BioSolvelt, Germany)
* Staying ahead of your medicinal chemistry project data (Accelrys, UK)
Cheminformatics Theory:
* Trends in data and models for drugs and diseases (LIACS Leiden NBIC)
* Cheminformatics and drug discovery (LACDR Leiden)
* Relating the molecular structure to adverse drug effects by using predictive computational methods (Cambridge University UK)
* Cheminformatics for data driven drug design (Merck)
* Personalized Medicine in HIV: giving a drug it cannot resist (LACDR Leiden / Janssen Pharmaceutics)
2009 Key Note Lectures “Predicting Drug Safety using Human-Based Information”
* Approaches to drug safety that minimize animal testing (Strategic Medicine Inc.)
* Toxicity pathways and models: mining for potential side-effects (Collaborative Drug Discovery Inc.)
* Applications of high throughput screening to identify profiles of biological activity (National Center for Computational Toxicology EPA USA)
