ALTERNATIVE

Development of an innovative platform based on aged cardiac tissue model in order to evaluate the environmental toxicology of chemical mixtures.

The ALTERNATIVE project is developing an in vitro platform with the objective to culture a 3D functional human cardiac tissue to evaluate the cardiotoxicity of chemical compounds and the impact of toxic substances on the population, especially in elderly and people with chronic diseases.

The novel developed platform will enable regulators and industry to identify, quantify and prevent cardiotoxic co-exposures to industrial chemicals and pharmaceuticals in a cost-effective way. Additionally, the implementation of computational models allows this platform to make predictions on chemical and pharmaceutical substances, avoiding the use of animal testing, providing close-to-real scenario information on toxicity and achieving a significant reduction of the associated direct and indirect costs.

On the other hand, ALTERNATIVE project also intends to impact on European regulations and on the evaluation of industrial chemical such as fertilizers or detergents, or pharmaceutical products.

Eurecat participates in important tasks of the project through its Omic Sciences Unit, which is performing the omics analysis in cardiac tissues to discover biomarkers of toxicity; the Digital Health Unit, with performs the computational modelling of toxic compounds; the Functional Printing and Embedded Devices Unit, which is responsible to build the electrostimulation system of the in vitro platform, and the Consultancy Unit, which is involved in data management, impact and exploitation.

The project, coordinated by the Politecnico di Torino (Italy), is part of the European Green Deal actions aimed “towards a zero-pollution ambition for a toxic free environment”.