Kollaborationen und Projekte 

Kollaborationen

• SaxoCHiLD is a designated partner of the future German Center for Child and Youth Health (DZKJ)
  
  
• NORMAN Association is a self-sustaining network of reference laboratories, research centers and related organizations for the monitoring and biomonitoring of emerging environmental substances.
  
  
• Beate Escher is honorary professor at the University of Queensland with main collaboration through the Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences Prof. Beate Escher at The University Of Queensland

Infrastruktur

We provide bioanalytical expertise with our facility CITEPro.

Aktuelle Drittmittelprojekte

• QTOX We are members of the Doctoral Network QTOX Quantitative Extrapolation in Ecotoxicology (EU-funded project). QTOX will develop mechanistic knowledge and data-efficient modelling tools to bridge the gap between standard toxicity data and ecologically relevant endpoints arising from chronic, time variable exposures to chemical mixtures. The results will be achieved through an interdisciplinary and intersectoral research and training program in which 10 doctoral candidates will characterise the mechanistic processes describing the successive events from exposure to ecosystem-level effects and develop models for extrapolation of adverse effects across levels of biological organization under environmentally realistic conditions. Our contribution is in In-vitro to in-vivo extrapolations in ecotoxicology.

• PANORAMIX This European Union funded project’s goal is to provide new tools for risk assessment of complex real-life mixtures. It focuses on substances present in water, food and the human body. Eleven European partners work together to develop a novel scientific framework to understand and quantify the risk of chemical mixture exposure and thus provide a basis for new regulations to better protect human health and the environment.

• PrecisionTox The objective of this European Union funded project is to improve chemical safety assessment by replacing animal testing with non-traditional test species, determine safe levels of exposure and collaborate with regulators and other stakeholders to incorporate Precision Toxicology in policy and law.
  
  
• NC3R CRACK IT challenge 36: Animal-free in vitro The Phase 2 of the Crack IT challenge is combining scientific, commercial and regulatory expertise. This 3 year project sponsored by AstraZeneca and Unilever aims to develop animal product-free adaptations of the in vitro OECD test guidelines TG487 and TG455 to improve human-relevant responses and reproducibility. The interdisciplinary consortium is led by ImmuOne, a British biotech company, and comprises, in addition to the UFZ, partners such as PAN Biotech, the University of Oxford and Goethe University Frankfurt. Our role in the project is the characterization and validation of the metabolic activity of the S9 alternative and the participation in the interlaboratory validation.
  
  
• Effect-based Monitoring in Water Safety Planning in collaboration with the Global Water Research Coalition
  

Aktuelle Projekte innerhalb des UFZ

• Healthy Aquatic Ecosystem

• Exposome

Abgeschlossene Projekte

• Joint Danube Survey 4 Our role is to assess water and sediment quality with effect-based tools.
  
  
• Kleingewässermonitoring the nationwide monitoring of small streams provides a quantitative assessment of the influence of pesticides from diffuse agricultural sources on small and medium-sized watercourses.
  
  
• Microfate In the BMBF-funded project MICRO-FATE (Characterization of the fate and effects of microplastic particles between hotspots and remote regions in the Pacific Ocean) lead by Dr. Annika Jahnke, our contribution is to assess the mixture effect of pollutants extracted from plastic and its environments (seawater and sediments) with cell-based bioassays.
  
  
• Alternative methods for wastewater treatment The approach is outlined in “Application of bioanalytical tools to evaluate treatment efficacy of conventional and intensified treatment wetlands” and we presently collaborate with UBZ on the application of effect-based tools for improving the treatment efficacy of treatment wetlands.
  
  
• SOLUTIONS wants to provide solutions for emerging pollutants in European water resources in close dialogue with stakeholders.
  
  
• LRI ECO36 The objective of this projects was to progress exposure assessment in in vitro bioassays used for high-throughput screening (HTS) in 384- and 1536-well plates and complex in vitro bioassays based on transwell and 3D cultures. The outcomes were experimentally validated models to predict the freely dissolved and cellular effect concentrations for existing in vitro toxicity data, including ToxCast and published data that were based on nominal effect concentrations only, which will then make them amenable for QIVIVE. The long-term benefit of the project will be routine analytical tools that will improve exposure assessment in HTS tests in the future and could revolutionise the application of HTS in risk assessment.
  
  
• IPIE In the project "Intelligence Led Assessment of Pharmaceuticals in the Environment” we lead the work package on ecotoxicity prediction methods. Our outputs are summarised in a review on "Recommendations for Improving Methods and Models for Aquatic Hazard Assessment of Ionizable Organic Chemicals”.
  
  
• NC3Rs CrackIT Challenge 27 The project" Using a Combination of Serum-mediated Passive Dosing and SPME Measurements for Controlling the Dose of Chemicals in in vitro Bioassays “ was lead by Dr. Luise Henneberger. The outcome is summarised in Henneberger L, Mühlenbrink M, König M, Schlichting R, Fischer FC, Escher BI (2019) Quantification of freely dissolved effect concentrations in in vitro cell-based bioassays.
  
  
• Unilever Building improved in-vitro exposure assessment capability: Towards the development and implementation of enhanced QIVIVE tools. The outcome is published in Experimental Validation of Mass Balance Models for in vitro Cell-based Bioassays. Environmental Science and Technology 2020
  
  
• Water quality of drinking water We collaborated with Veolia for bioanalytical assessment of drinking water and drinking water treatment in France. The results are summarised in two publications "Bioanalytical assessment of adaptive stress responses in drinking water as a tool to differentiate between micropollutants and disinfection by-products” and "Application of in vitro bioassays for water quality monitoring in three drinking water treatment plants using different treatment processes including biological treatment, nanofiltration and ozonation coupled with disinfection"