The 145th Annual Meeting of the Pharmaceutical Society of Japan (Fukuoka)

Organizer: Kiyoshi Fukuhara (Grad. Sch. Pharm. Sci., Showa Univ.), Akiko Ohno (NIHS)

In the context of improving efficiency in chemical safety evaluations and considering animal welfare, there is a global push to reduce animal testing and adopt more efficient and ethical evaluation methods, making the need for alternative methods to animal experiments widely advocated. In the United States, the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, passed by the U.S. Congress in December 2022, marked a turning point by abolishing the mandatory use of animal testing in drug development and enabling the use of new alternative evaluation methods. Against this backdrop, innovative evaluation methods utilizing NAMs, in silico models, MPS, and 2D/3D cell culture techniques are rapidly being developed. These methods aim to provide more accurate safety evaluations without relying on traditional animal testing. Additionally, new chemicals, such as nanomaterials, may exhibit toxicity mechanisms different from low molecular weight chemicals, making traditional evaluation methods unsuitable in some cases. Therefore, there is a need for the development of new evaluation techniques based on toxicity indicators such as genetic toxicity, immunotoxicity, and neurotoxicity.
In this symposium, we will welcome experts engaged in toxicity evaluation research, who will present the latest findings and introduce new toxicity evaluation methods for chemical substances. We would also like to comprehensively discuss the impact of chemicals on humans and the validity of their evaluation methods.