Welcome to the summer edition of the ESTIV 2021 Newsletter summarising the news and activities related to ESTIV society and its members.

Link to the newsletter No. 48: https://www.estiv.org/newsletter/estiv-newsletter-summer-2021/

Dear ESTIV Members,

Let me start this first Newsletter of the year 2021 by wishing you good health and a very productive and prosperous year.

Despite the COVID outbreak, that brought to all of us many unexpected challenges, the  ESTIV  society is committed to pursuing its mission and continue in the planned activities. The 21st International ESTIV Congress will be held on 22-26 November 2022 in Barcelona-Sitges, Spain. The scientific committee together with the Klinkhamer Group, the congress PCO, are preparing exciting scientific as well as social programs. I want to acknowledge all our speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors for the meeting’s continuous support and flexibility.
The epidemiological situation had also an impact on the organization of the Applied In Vitro Toxicology Course, which has been at the end organized as an online event. You can read a short report from this meeting in this edition of the Newsletter. The ESTIV Board wants to express sincere thanks to the co-organizers of the course: the Belgian Society of Toxicology and Ecotoxicology (BelTox), the Université Catholique de Louvain, and to MatTek In Vitro Life Science Laboratories, for the commitment to this important educational activity. Special thanks go to Prof. Dominique Lison and his team who hosted the online course and to all the speakers and participants that made this event attractive and interactive.
ESTIV collaborated in 2020 closely with ASCCT in organizing ASCCT-ESTIV Webinars. We will strengthen this fruitful collaboration also in 2021 and together with ASCCT decided to use a new Webinars platform, that will bring better oppotunities for sharing the scientific knowledge between our members. If you would like to contribute to the series of webinars, please do not hesitate to contact the  ESTIV or ASCCT webinar’s committees. ESTIV website, as the main communication tool of the society, is being continuously updated and enhanced.  We will soon introduce new online features that will bring benefits and increase interactions between the ESTIV members. This is also achieved thanks to the continuous collaboration of ESTIV with GUARANT International, which supports the society with secretarial services, and helps the board to focus more on the planning and executing the scientific activities, and decreases the need of being involved in daily administration.
ESTIV is a society, that puts a special focus on early-career scientists. Also this year, we will provide great opportunities to offer travel grants and awards. We invite you to read about these opportunities on our webpage in the section Bursaries and Grants and encourage you to apply. ESTIV remains active in many research and training activities as well as EU programs and plans to extend this involvement in 2021. ESTIV would not be able to grow without the commitment of excellent scientists and dedicated board members who shaped the path of the society and contributed to its growth. ESTIV Honorary memberships have been granted to the two past presidents of ESTIV – Prof. Mathieu VInken and Prof. Greet Schoeters –  in recognition of their outstanding commitment and contributions to ESTIV.  Sincere congratulations to both awarded past presidents from the whole Board!

The dedicated work of ESTIV members and the Board is the main driver for the continuous success of society. ESTIV undoubtedly belongs to the leading organizations promoting new approach methodologies (NAMs) in research and science and does this for more than  20 years. I had a chance to observe and be involved in the activities of ESTIV since 2004, when I joined the organization as a Ph.D. student after the highly successful ESTIV Congress in Zegrze, Poland. Ten years later, I joined the Board as a person responsible for communication. I recently took over the ESTIV presidency from Prof. Mathieu Vinken, who served as president of ESTIV from 2016 to 2020. During this period, Mathieu and his team have launched a number of new initiatives, including the ASCCT-ESTIV webinars, established several new collaborations via Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with societies having a similar scope and have strengthened ESTIV’s financial status.
In the next 4 years, together with the newly elected Board, we would like to continue in the activities that encourage the use of the principles of 3Rs in education, research, and science. Our goal will be to strengthen collaborations with the ESTIV affiliated and MoU societies promoting the concept of NAMs.  We will support the ESTIV members’ networking activities by organizing webinars and providing travel bursaries to the young scientist to events of partnering organizations. The organization of Applied training courses and involvements in the EU projects with the focus of NAMs will further reinforce the core mission of ESTIV – i.e. to be a platform that strengthens links between organizations and individuals with interests in the many different aspects and applications of in vitro and in silico approaches throughout Europe and beyond.

I hope you will enjoy reading this Newsletter, that is bringing a lot of exciting information and that it will motivate you to get involved in many ongoing and future ESTIV activities.

Dr. Helena Kandarova, E.R.T.
ESTIV President

Dear ESTIV members,

First and foremost, I hope all of you as well as your family, beloved ones, friends and colleagues are safe and sound. We are facing challenging times to say the least. The COVID-19 crisis is impacting all of us directly or indirectly. My thoughts go to the many patients and victims, and I want to express my sincere appreciation to the frontline caregivers as well as to all other people worldwide who in one or the other way help to defeat the Coronavirus. This is a time where we have to deal with grief and sorrow, but we also see a lot of empathy, solidarity and unity. In this respect, I want to greatly thank our members, speakers, sponsors and exhibitors for the understanding and flexibility regarding the decision of the ESTIV Board to postpone both the “Applied In Vitro Toxicology Course” (new dates: 25-30 October 2020) and the “21st ESTIV Congress” (new dates: 22-26 November 2022), taking place in Brussels-Belgium and Sitges-Spain, respectively.

This first newsletter of 2020 will be my last one as ESTIV President. I had the great honor to serve the ESTIV Board for a full decade, first as responsible for student affairs (2010-2012), subsequently as Vice-President (2012-2016) and finally as President (2016-2020). This has been an intensive yet pleasant experience for me with a lot of new collaborations and great friendships. I am very proud of what the current and former ESTIV Boards have accomplished in those 10 years, including the organization of a plethora of workshops, courses, webinars and conferences as well as a considerable extension of our network by teaming up with various societies around the globe. I would like to thank all ESTIV Board members, but in particular all the regular members, corporate members, sponsors, affiliated and memorandum of understanding societies for the confidence, support, interest and active participation in the ESTIV events. The ESTIV Presidency will now be taken over by Dr. Helena Kandárová, who joined the ESTIV Board in 2014. I am fully confident in Helena and the entire renewed ESTIV Board, all who are very committed to pursue the ESTIV activities in the upcoming years.

Prof. Mathieu Vinken, PhD, PharmD, ERT
ESTIV President

Link to the newsletter No. 45: https://mailchi.mp/c88729cda2dd/estiv-newsletter-no44-12457525?e=6bef376925

Dear ESTIV members,

At the start of this second newsletter of the year, I am happy to announce that ESTIV now has a brand new website http://estiv.org, which, along with our presence on social media, will be the main tool to communicate with our members to advertise our events. In this respect, 2019 has been very productive and successful for ESTIV thus far. Indeed, together with the American Society for Cellular and Computational Toxicology (ASCCT), ESTIV has organized 9 free webinars presented by researchers from Europe and the US on topics related to in vitro and/or in silico toxicology since January. Another ESTIV-ASCCT joint activity included the fifth edition of the Applied In Vitro Toxicology Course that was organized in Bucharest-Romania from 14 to 19 April and that was attended by 31 participants coming from 13 different countries. Of note, this course is now recognized by EUROTOX as part of the European Registered Toxicologist (ERT) accreditation program. In May this year, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed between ESTIV and the European Society Animal Cell Technology (ESACT). The goal of this Memorandum of Understanding is to provide members of the societies involved a greater platform in which to develop and share their expertise on 3Rs approaches, in particular with respect to in vitro toxicology. Furthermore, ESTIV has granted and number of travel bursaries and awards to early-stage researchers, and was represented during several congresses and workshops, some for which a report is provided in the present newsletter. ESTIV is now getting ready for 2 new major events taking place in 2020. The first event is the sixth edition of the “Applied In Vitro Toxicology Course” that will be organized from 5 to 10 April 2020 in Brussels-Belgium in collaboration with the Belgian Society of Toxicology and Ecotoxicology (BelTox), the Université Catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) and MatTek In Vitro Life Science Laboratories s.r.o. The second event includes the 21st international congress of ESTIV taking place from 8 to 11 June 2020 in Sitges near the city of Barcelona-Spain. ESTIV will grant for the very first time an early-career award during its congress in Spain and intends to do so every 2 years as of now. The Award will be given to an early-career scientist in recognition of an outstanding and significant contribution to the field of in vitro and/or in silico toxicology.

I hope to welcome you during these events in Brussels and Barcelona!
In the meanwhile, I hope you will enjoy this newsletter and I wish you a warm and productive autumn and winter.

Prof. Mathieu Vinken, PhD, PharmD, ERT
ESTIV President

Link to the newsletter No. 45
https://https://mailchi.mp/133506e6464a/estiv-newsletter-no44-267961

Dear ESTIV Members,
In this first newsletter of 2019, I am proud to announce that the ESTIV2018 conference (15-18 October 2018, Berlin-Germany) has been the most successful ESTIV meeting in its history. Indeed, this 20th ESTIV conference has hosted 447 participants from 45 countries worldwide and received a total of 285 abstracts. You will read several contributions related to ESTIV2018 in this newsletter. Besides the scientific program, several other important events took place during ESTIV2018, including signing a new Memorandum of Understanding with the Japanese Society for Alternatives to Animal Experiments (JSAAE) and granting ESTIV honorary membership to Chantra Eskes. Along with Laura Suter-Dick, Eleonora Buzanska and Philippe Bourrinet, Chantra Eskes left the ESTIV Board during the ESTIV General Assembly (17 October 2018, Berlin-Germany) because of end of term. The ESTIV Board is grateful to all 4 of them for their years of commitment and contribution to ESTIV. A number of new ESTIV Board members have been welcomed during the ESTIV General Assembly, including Erin Hill and Hajime Kojima, American Society for Cellular and Computational Toxicology (ASCCT) liaison and JSAAE liaison, respectively. Many activities are upcoming. ESTIV will also continue to organize free webinars together with ASCCT and invites its members to propose relevant topics to be covered during these webinars. Furthermore, ESTIV will be represented during annual international toxicology conferences, including the EUROTOX meeting. You will read more about this in the current newsletter. I hope you find the information provided in this newsletter useful.

Prof. Mathieu Vinken, PhD, PharmD, ERT
ESTIV President

Link to the newsletter No. 44
https://mailchi.mp/18208dfc7790/estiv-newsletter-no44?e=6bef376925