The Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM) has announced the launch of a new European Framework 7 project to develop and implement a novel integrated approach for engineered nanoparticle (ENP) risk assessment. Entitled ‘ENPRA’ (Engineered NanoParticle Risk Assessment), the project ‘aims to support long term growth and sustainability of nanotechnologies by expanding the classic exposure-dose-response paradigm of risk assessment, to develop an effective approach for the assessment and management of potential health risks from exposure to engineered nanoparticles.’

'‘ENPRA also has a strong British element, with the participation of three UK research organisations, the IOM, Edinburgh Napier and Edinburgh Universities,’ said Dr Tran. ‘In addition, the in vitro and in silico approaches to be developed within ENPRA will also help to reduce the need for animal experimentation in nanotoxicology’ he added.’

ENPRA, which will run for 3 ½ years, under a total budget of EURO 3.7 million, is led by the IOM and involves 14 other European and 6 US partners including three US Federal Agencies: EPA, NIOSH and NIH-NIEHS.

According to the press release, ‘the fundamentally novel rationale of ENPRA goes beyond traditional toxicity assessment of ENP and seeks to:

• identify the critical ENP physico-chemical characteristics responsible for the observed toxicity;
• investigate the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the observed association;
• develop systems, verifiable with in vivo experiments, which could be used as potential high throughput alternative toxicity tests;
• use a Structure-Activity method to facilitate such identification and use this to predict the hazard of new materials;
• extrapolate the results from in vitro to in vivo and to other relevant occupational or consumer situations;
• incorporate all possible data as weight-of-evidence for a risk assessment of ENP’

Follow this link to read the full press release.