A total of 70 expert speakers delivered a vast array of new ideas, fascinating revelations about their work and a valuable collection of best-practice working ideas based on cutting-edge research as well as commercial experience.

This was particularly evident in the plenary sessions. Speakers included Fabio Gualandris, executive vice president at STMicroelectronics; Berthold Hellenthal, head of Audi comprehensive semiconductor strategy Audi AG; Ed de Jong, vice president of development at Avantium; Klaus-Michael Weltring, managing director at Nanobioanalytic Muenster and member of board at ETP Nanomedicine; and Michel Glotin, scientific director for materials at ARKEMA. They all delivered impressive examples of how nano materials, nano electronics and nano manufacturing processes in general are now fundamental to their business success, while also offering an often inspiring vision of how things will develop over the coming years.

The audience heard how microelectronics are changing manufacturing methodologies, while the Internet of Things is reshaping manufacturing. Machines are becoming faster, more accurate, more reliable and smaller. Medicine is becoming predictive, preventative, personalised and participatory. New materials are making their way into everyday products and driving costs down. Even Lego is soon to be made out of bio-based materials! Meanwhile, more than 90 per cent of car innovation will be based on advanced materials and nanoelectronics in the next few years.

Nanotechnology and nanomaterials make all of this possible and this is now driving innovation as never before. “Advanced materials and nano electronics, for example, are vital for the car industry,” said Berthold Hellenthal. “Cars of the future will have a huge amount of nanomaterials, a huge amount of compute power and a massive amount of memory – and as we incorporate all these things, they need to get smaller.”

This, in turn, is changing the way manufacturers like Audi work. “The entire industry has changed a lot from years ago, when most of the work was essentially to do with metal bending,” explained Hellenthal.  “We now adapt and work with different partners in the market, like semiconductor companies, to get them into our production cycle from the start.”

This message about a need for collaboration across industry was echoed by all speakers when discussing the potential of nano innovation to reach the market.

“The medtech industry has 25,000 companies in Europe, has created 550,000 jobs, turns over €106billion a year and produces 500,000 medical devices,” said Klaus-Michael Weltring. “This involves working with people from across the spectrum. Many technologies need to work together to make the sophisticated devices needed. Business must also come together – ICT and health for example.

“We need this to deal with the paradigm shift taking place in healthcare. Soon, over a billion people will know their own genome – predicting illness, preventing it and monitoring treatment will all become automated.”

He went on to outline ESTHER, a new EU initiative designed to bring research and industry into closer alignment in terms of eHealth and smart medical devices, particularly with support for SMEs and helping to set the research agenda for the next round of funding objectives in FP9. “ESTHER will help improve coordination all along the value chain, from R&D to market access,” he said.

In terms of what is driving nano innovation to the market, Michael Glotin touched on the difference between products being driven by the technology itself or by market demand. “We have delivered several nanostructured materials to the market,” he said. “Uptake is slower when the development of the product is driven by the technology.”

Using the example of wind turbine blades being developed by ARKEMA in response to huge demand, he said: “When it is driven by a market demand, it can be quicker.”

It is clear that nanotechnology will be key to Europe’s economic success and an enabler of key technologies that improve the lives of Europeans everywhere. Speakers agreed, however, that Europe needs to act now to make the most of this opportunity.

Fabio Gualandris, for example, warned that as machines become increasingly connected, smarter, faster and more accurate through nanotechnology, we need to focus on ensuring we have the right people skills in place in Europe to keep up with the US.

“We have the skills in Europe,” he said. “We have good people coming from our universities, but they are being driven by the traditional approach and not one where different industries are working together.

“We are five to ten years behind the US,” he continued. “We can catch up but we have to be focused and concentrate on competence and getting industry and research working together.”

At the start of the session, moderator Laura Koponen, managing director of conference organiser Spinverse, asked the audience to predict what they thought would be the key concept to emerge from the speakers’ comments using one or two words on the conference app. “Collaboration” was the word shining biggest from the screen in the resulting word cloud.  It was an accurate and apt prediction, although it was eclipsed by another word as Koponen closed the session by asking the audience the same question. “Risk” now shone bright.

Risk was a key theme running through another key focus of the discussions at the event, particularly at a session dealing with the investment potential of nano and the challenge to turn intellectual capital into commercial opportunity.

Perhaps one of the most memorable speakers in this session was Valeria Nicolosi, professor of nanomaterials and advanced microscopy at Trinity College Dublin, who spoke about her work with her “500 superheroes”. These are layered materials that she has reduced to layers one atom thick, like graphene, all with hugely valuable properties in themselves.

Using these materials, she and her team have developed a full range of energy storage solutions, printed batteries and stretchable devices for the wearable tech market, as wells as all-solid transparent, flexible energy storage devices.

“Industry has come to me with real issues to solve that 2D nano materials can help,” she said. “And this all started with an ERC starting grant in 2012 and, with lots more funding I now have a team of 32 and we are facing future challenges with a very open mind.

Magnus Ryde of Spirit Ventures applauded this sense of entrepreneurial zeal in the researcher, but pointed out the difficulty of taking nano into the commercial world due to the length of time needed, something that would put off venture capitalists who look for much shorter payback timescales.

“Developing key enabling technologies takes time and money,” he said. “The technology takes time to develop –  at least 10 years to take innovations from R&D into a product.

“10 years is too long for venture capital funding. Venture capital is built in 10 year cycles – five to invest, five to harvest. If a venture capitalist see that a key enabling technology will take more than five years to market, they won’t invest.

“And it also costs money to get a company to stand on its own two legs – 10-15 years and 100 million euros.

“So we have to create a funding model that taps into the requirements of this space. If we don’t, our great research will go elsewhere.”

Ryde then explained how ProNano, developed by Spirit Ventures, is now focused on key enabling technologies in Nordic and Baltic countries and this is getting much support, not least from the EC who agreed that something needs to change in this sector in terms of investment.

“We are raising a fund of €300-500 million,” he revealed. “We need the staying power to stay in the game for the time needed.”

As well as focusing on some of the key enabling technologies that are making nano an invaluable part of industrial development, the event also focused on how best to leverage this technology and bring it to market. Investing in nano, nano trends, and nano innovation were all discussed at length, while delegates also had the chance to network on a lively exhibition floor and talk business in special matchmaking sessions.

Closing the event, the EC’s Peter Dröll concluded that he sees Europe as being in a positive space in terms of advanced materials and nanotechnologies. “We are well integrated,” he said.  “There is a solid link between research and industry – not yet with venture capital, but we are looking at ways to solve this. In the next three years we will invest €1.6billion in industrial technology and €700million of this will be in nanotechnology and advanced materials, while open innovation hubs will, we hope, also attract venture capital investment.

“This is a very European sector and very value-driven too. We are reducing weight, making products more circular and are using less energy. Importantly, we are also addressing pressing societal issues.”

Dröll ended by issuing a specific challenge, by promising a €10m prize to the first to produce a battery for a car that has range of 800km, a charging time of  three minutes and lifespan of 10 years. “It’s a huge challenge, but there is a huge reward for us all at the end of it.”

The event ended with a full programme of interactive and highly productive workshops, where discussions took place in more intimate surroundings and focused on everything from advanced materials to value-added industrialisation.

EuroNanoForum 2017 brings industry to centre stage for nano innovation, while a special workshop focuses on how we ensure this innovation is safe for all

Nanotechnology is widely regarded as being at the vanguard of industrial innovation, helping us push the boundaries of what is possible across a diverse range of science and industry. Whether it’s advancing new treatments for cancer, delivering faster and cleaner production methods or simply making our washing-up liquid go further, things are happening now at the nano scale.

Not only does this nano revolution offer huge possibilities for society in terms of the way we live our lives, it also, of course, has huge potential for Europe’s economic competitiveness across the world and the creation of jobs at home.

But if we are truly to reap the benefits of nanotechnology, then all the innovations it enables over the coming years need to be safe. We need to be sure that the minute particles that deliver such huge rewards are not going to harm human health or the environment in any way.

Delivering safe nanotechnology to the market is a fundamental necessity and the bedrock of all nano developments now and in the future.

EuroNanoForum 2017, which takes place in Valletta, Malta from June 21-23, is Europe’s biggest nanotechnology event and this year it focuses on strengthening the competitiveness of European manufacturing industries through nano and advanced materials technologies and innovation.

The forum will attract more than 1,000 delegates from industry, policy and the research community will put the latest technology developments into context within their multiple industrial applications and provide a platform for industrialists to deliver their nano-enhanced solutions and highlight their successes – as well as the challenges they face.

At the heart of these discussions will be nano safety, with several keynote presentations, panel discussions and exhibition stands focusing on the latest tools available to ensure nano innovation is safe.

A full day’s workshop will also focus entirely on delivering safe nanotechnology to the market and, in particular, on how the current state-of-the-art tools can be used by industry, what industry actually requires and the changing regulatory framework that is needed to ensure safe nano.

The workshop, which takes place on June 23 at 9.30-15.30, is organised by Nanosolutions, one of Europe’s largest ever nanosafety projects, the European NanoSafety Cluster and, to ensure that vital industry perspective, the Nanotechnologies Industry Association.

“The full-day meeting will be dedicated to open discussion and interaction with active nano-sector players from the European Commission, regulatory authorities, large companies, SMEs and research centres, all of whom work globally to build the nano-ecosystem,” explained Bengt Fadeel of the Karolinska Institute and the Nanosolutions project and part of the workshop organising committee.

“Delegates will gain an insight into the state of the art while examining the changing regulatory framework, policy perspectives and societal expectations. Importantly, the discussions will have an active industry focus in terms of current practice, expectations and requirements.”

There will be three main discussion forums, kicking off with “tools for safety assessment”. This session will explore how recent advances in hazard and safety assessment can help regulatory bodies to develop robust and scientifically valid regulatory requirements that can be used at EU and national levels.

This will be followed by a session called “towards safe by design”, which will showcases the types of tools emerging and also to highlight what industry needs in order for these to be genuinely integrated into product development processes.

The final session will examine “the future of risk governance”, looking at the way forward for long-term risk assessment, risk management and risk governance.

The day will end with a lively round table discussion by leading industry, policy and research stakeholders examining the long-term future for nanotechnology, from a research, consumer and industry perspective and explore with the audience what roadmap needs to be in place. Members will provide a vision of the future and the panel will discuss how regulation, funding and safety can make this happen.

The workshop is being supported by the European Commission and the opening keynote will be given by Georgios Katalagarianakis, Directorate General for Research & Innovation.

“Mindful of the fast progress of the nanotechnologies market, the EU has established a world class technological research programme for developing the knowledge and the skills needed for the deployment of these technologies in perfectly safe manner,” said Katalagarianakis.

“This workshop will examine how this knowledge and skill can be applied commercially to the market, enabling the safe delivery of nano innovation for all.”

• The workshop is free for all delegates attending the EuroNanoForum 2017.
• Those not registered for EuroNanoForm 2017 can register only for the day of the workshop using a special discount code COMPWKP. This provides access to the Safety Workshop as well as other workshops taking place on the day. The total cost for this day will be €278.78, which includes refreshments and lunch.
• For information about the workshop, for a full list of speakers and to register, visit http://euronanoforum2017.eu/workshops-list/
• For more information about EuroNanoForum 2017, visit http://euronanoforum2017.eu

Notes for editors

EuroNanoForum 2017, Valletta, Malta from June 21-23 2017

For more information about the Forum or to arrange interviews with key delegates and speakers, call William Davis at Insight on +44 117 2033 120 or email [email protected]

Interviews are also available with Claire Skentelbery, DG of the NIA and Bengt Fadeel of the Karolinska Institute, who represents the EU NanoSafety Cluster of nanosafety research projects.

The eightieth publication in this series, entitled Alternative testing strategies in risk assessment of manufactured nanomaterials: current state of knowledge and research needs to advance their use ENV/JM/MONO(2016)63, tackles the issue of ‘alternative testing strategies, or strategies that reduce or replace the use of animal testing’ in the specific case of nanomaterial risk assessment.

The OECD publication reports on the progress of the WPMN project on alternative testing, which has produced the following outputs:

• a state of the science report Alternative Testing Strategies for Nanomaterials: State of the Science for alternative Testing Strategies in Risk Analysis (Shatkin and Ong, 2016) (link is external)
• a case study on methods for alternative testing strategies for nano TiO2
• a workshop with the Society for Risk Analysis (SRA) on Advancing risk analysis for nanomaterials: a workshop to explore how a multiple models approach can advance risk analysis of nanoscale materials

These activities have highlighted ‘the utility of alternative testing strategies for screening level decisions’ and produced ‘immediately implementable recommendations on how to improve the progress and growth of alternative testing strategies’. Conclusions also insist that such strategies will support categorisation and read-across for nanomaterials.

Please follow this link to download the full OECD report.

With data from all the partners now received, work has begun on the analysis and creation of predictive models. Dario Greco explains what has been done so far and how collaboration with external groups will help to validate the model’s effectiveness.

We received most of the data from the partners by the end of 2016. There were some delays but we finally got the data in by December, and so we have now started to model the data.

We already know a few things. The data is of good quality, and the problem is modellable. Our algorithms seem to be working well. We estimate that it will take around one week’s worth of analysis on our computer to create reasonable models from the NANOSOLUTIONS dataset.

At the moment we are actually building a number of classifiers i.e. multiple predictive models. One of them gives us an overall idea of what is dangerous and what is not, considering all the data and considering all of the ways in which these materials can cause harm. But then we have gone further, asking specific questions such as: what features of nanomaterials will kill cells? What features of nanomaterials will cause genotoxicity? Which nanomaterials are capable of causing inflammatory diseases in mice? So we are working on a number of classifiers that can tell us different things.

From what we have seen so far, the models are performing very well with our data. Using 10-15 biomarkers, we are able to predict which nanomaterials are dangerous or not with over 90 per cent accuracy. If confirmed, these results will be a significant advancement from the currently available predictive models. Having said that, these are still preliminary models and we are still receiving small changes to the data, meaning we are continuing to make adjustments.

As well as this we are working in collaboration with WP12 to collect a number of datasets from outside NANOSOLUTIONS that can be used for external validation. When you build a model, you test the accuracy of the model on a certain dataset, for example the NANOSOLUTIONS dataset. This is an internal validation. However, no matter how carefully the experimental data has been collected, you can never be sure that this data isn’t showing things that don’t exist in other datasets. In order to avoid this kind of situation, you take your models and apply them to some external datasets.

We are validating our models on independent datasets, such as the one from the EU FP7 project MARINA. They have produced several omics data layers, so we are taking data from there. We have also started collaborating with some scientists from Canada with whom we are exchanging data and models. So in the coming months, possibly beyond the end of the project, we will have a better idea of how valid our models are.

As a key enabling technology (KET) central to the future of European manufacturing, engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) will increasingly be a part of everyday life. With such prevalence in the modern world, it is important that events like EuroNanoForum 2017 can discuss the societal aspects of nanotechnology to explore issues concerning environment, health and safety (EHS), policy frameworks and regulatory requirements.

Currently, nanosafety regulations are almost nonexistent. There are no occupational exposure limits set for any of the ENMs so far, meaning safe and responsible use can easily be challenged, but in recent years there has been a shift from toxicological studies of individual nanomaterials towards the development of integrated, systematic assessment tools. In NanoSafety Cluster alone there are several large scale Horizon 2020 projects developing hazard assessment tools and safe-by-design (SbD) approaches.

Coming to a close in March, the NANOSOLUTIONS project has for the last four years been working on its own NanoSafety Classifier to allow scientists to predict harmful effects of ENMs. Kai Savolainen, research professor and director of the NanoSafety Research Centre at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (FIOH), is NANOSOLUTIONS’ coordinator: “Our main goal has been the development of a tool which is able to categorise different types of ENMs into hazard classes based on assessing associations between material characteristics and the biological data we’ve collected.”

The actualisation of the NanoSafety Classifier is dependent on the huge amounts of systematic data that’s been collected, so it’s only in the final stages that testing has begun in earnest on existing ENMs on the market. Savolainen has stated that the project had a risky element all along but now that the end is drawing near, he is positive about it’s successes. Whether it will be implemented, however, is another issue. “That’s the goal, of course. My prediction is that the project will provide a classifier and evidence that these materials can be categorised regarding their hazard properties, but it needs a lot of work to get it into a shape that regulators, policy makers and industry would be willing to use”.

There’s a lingering perception that the notion of ‘nanosafety’ means red tape. Rules and regulations aren’t immediately associated with innovation, but requirements to safeguard human and environmental health needn’t be a barrier to industrial and commercial interests. In fact, it can mean just the opposite. In the chemicals industry, products are almost hitting the market before the required hazard identification steps are taken. If there’s an unacceptable risk to the workers or the general population then the product is pulled at great expense. However, if businesses can incorporate hazard assessment into the design phase of their products, then they stand to make huge gains in the long term. Rather than talk about the dangers of ENMs and trying to ban them, nanosafety is concerned with awareness and helping manufacturers to design safer materials. By helping a number of industries get their products through complex regulatory and approval processes, nanosafety guidelines could be the point where innovation begins.

It’s unlikely that a rash of nanosafety policies are going to be implemented across European industry overnight. There are proposals for occupational exposure limits to NMEs by U.S., German and Dutch organisations but none have have yet been put in place. Although the NanoSafety Classifier has been four years in the making, it is early days for this type of hazard assessment tool. The project is yet to conclude and has only recently delivered its key results to the European Commission. After that, new projects will be established to develop it further.

Currently in the NanoSafety Cluster are two Horizon2020 projects working on hazard assessment tools of ENMs: NanoFASE and SmartNanoTox. NanoFASE is looking to deliver an integrated Exposure Assessment Framework that allows the early assessment of potential environmental and human exposure and risks. It is also intended to facilitate safe product design and the inclusion these aspects in nano regulation. SmartNanoTox, meanwhile, aims at significant advances in nanotoxicity prediction through the development of smart tools that combine state-of-the-art approaches based on systems biology, statistical and other computational methods of analysis to gauge nano hazards.

Projects like ProSAFE and NanoReg2 develop and promote the concept of nanosafety as a route to commercial innovation, to incorporate the SbD approach at every level of nanomaterial-oriented production value chains. The aim is to make the implications of SbD concrete and clear in order to encourage regulators, and eventually legislators, to enshrine them in a legal framework throughout the EU and beyond.

Cooperation is key. Just as the success of Europe’s industrial future is reliant on the capacity of its member states to club together, guidelines for the safe and responsible use of ENMs needs academia, research organisations, industry and regulators to collaborate and better understand each other’s needs. As coordinator of the NanoSafety Cluster, Savolainen set the agenda for the European Commission’s nanosafety research agenda for the 2015 to 2025 period. Although the issue of nanosafety hasn’t always taken centre stage in the nanotech world, it has certainly become a more prominent feature, despite appearances. While there might be fewer projects dedicated to nanosafety, there is a growing trend for nanosafety components within purely material science research projects where the safety of materials and the safety of the processes in which they’re being used in industrial and occupational environments is assessed.

A new industrial revolution is an exciting opportunity for European economies. Nanosafety and EHS regulations can protect workers, the population and the environment without undermining the commercial interests of Europe’s manufacturing industries.

Panel

In a measure to ensure that key results produced by the NANOSOLUTIONS project are kept high on the agenda, the project will be hosting a workshop at the EuroNanoForum 2017, being held in Malta in June.

Kai Savolainen believes that the work carried out in developing the NanoSafety Classifier, as well as the advances in high throughput screening and life cycle analysis, can be of great value in the ongoing work taking place in H2020 projects and in other initiatives.

“It is important that the enormous advances we have made in the systems biology approach and computational modelling to predict safety hazards in ENM is utilised, both by industry in their work on assessing which materials to use and by further research,” he says. “There is a huge amount of valuable data available now, while our work on LCA and in high throughput screening will be of enormous benefit to ongoing projects.”

All those with an interest are free to attend this workshop and further information about speakers and a more detailed agenda will follow NANOSOLUTIONS’ final conference, which takes place in Malaga on February 6-7.

• Please contact William Davis at Insight Publishers for more information or if you would like to participate in the workshop – [email protected]

One of the main outcomes of the joint workshop in Stockholm between NANOSOLUTIONS and NanoMile was that two papers will be produced. The first, led by Dario Greco, will be a more technical scientific paper on the use of omics and technology in nanoscience, and will present a lot of the evidence that has been gathered.

The second paper, which will be produced by Richard Handy of Plymouth University, will be a perspectives paper to engage the regulatory community in using the new approaches and computational methods that have been developed in the consortium. “This has always been a problem in science,” says Handy. “Whenever a new molecular tool or technique comes along, the regulatory process tends to be quite conservative because of their existing standard procedures and methods. When computational methods for genomics and QSARS were first invented, the regulators were years behind the universities before they started to warm up to them. So we need to start having dialogue with them now about why our approaches could be useful.”

Handy’s experience of working with the OECD on nanomaterials has taught him about the methods and thought processes that regulators go through before accepting new techniques. “There will be a lot of dialogue to be done between the scientists and the regulators, and the process can take five years or so before things get accepted,” he says. “Ultimately, our tools will be not be used if there is no regulatory acceptance of the computational approaches. That is why it’s also important to have the other EU projects such as NanoMile and NanoFase collaborating on this paper so that we have a large section of the nanomaterials community coming forward and delivering the same message together. That way the regulators will will have a weight of evidence showing the benefits of the technology.

The other paper led by Greco, which will present much of the scientific evidence of the project, should also be of interest to the regulators. “Most of the proteomics analysis from animal biology is now done,” says Handy. “We are now at the point where we can test our original question of whether there is a coating effect of whether it’s the core chemistry of a nanomaterial that informs its toxicity. Our initial maps are suggesting the latter, which is more in line with the current paradigm of thinking. If this does prove to be the case, it will probably be a relief for the regulators, as any significant coating effect would mean having to overhaul the regulatory process.”

It isn’t just the science that the regulators must be convinced on. The advanced computational methods using artificial intelligence are probably the first example of any such methods being used for safety assessment, and this will almost certainly cause extra caution. “Our system is essentially teaching itself, and people making regulatory decisions will find this unnerving!” Handy says. “We need to make them realise that the information provided by such AI can be treated like that from a technical expert – you can take it or leave it.”

Experts to convene in Malaga to discuss the safety of nanomaterials. Scientists from across Europe will be meeting to discuss the safety of nanomaterials on the 7-9th February 2017 in Malaga, Spain.

The event, called “New tools and approaches for nanomaterial safety assessment”, is jointly organised by five major European projects NANOSOLUTIONS, SUN, NanoMILE, GUIDEnano, and eNanoMapper. It will present the main results achieved in the course of the projects to create discussion about their impact in the nanosafety field and possibilities for future research programmes.

Engineered nanomaterials (ENM) – defined as having at least one dimension smaller than 100nm – have attracted a great deal of interest during recent years, due to their many technologically interesting properties. The unique properties of ENM and their applications have given birth to immense technological and economic expectations for industries using ENM. However, some of these properties have given rise to concern that they may be harmful to humans. Currently, creating commercial products using ENM requires rigorous testing and there are many barriers to overcome.

Current legislation that governs the safety classification of ENM in Europe is complex. Each ENM has to be treated as a separate chemical and be individually tested to assess its safety characteristics. This means developing new materials using different nanoparticles is both time-consuming and expensive. Consequently, there is a real need for ways to reduce the amount of individual testing of ENM that is currently occurring, as this will help to reduce the cost of developing ENM-based products and speed up innovation.

Conference topics

• Hazard assessment along the life cycle of nano products
• Exposure assessment along the life cycle of nano products
• Risk assessment and management
• Systems biology approaches in nanosafety
• Categorisation and grouping of nanomaterials
• Nanosafety infrastructure
• Safety by design

Stakeholders workshop

The conference will be wrapped up with a stakeholder workshop that will provide a platform for an open discussion with interested stakeholders that could ultimately guide the research needs that should be addressed in future projects.

NANOSOLUTIONS Project

The NANOSOLUTIONS project will also be using the meeting to hold its final conference to assess the impact of its work over the past 4 years. The project has been looking to identify and elaborate the characteristics of engineered nanomaterials (ENM) that determine their biological hazard potential. It is developing a safety classification model for ENM based on an understanding of their interactions with living organisms. This will be critical for maintaining Europe’s position in the nanotechnology field, firstly by making testing procedures shorter and more cost effective, and secondly by increasing public confidence in products that use ENM, thus making them more commercially viable.

Through the NanoSafety Cluster, EU funded projects are harmonising their efforts to improve innovation and environmental health and safety in the manufacture of nanomaterials

Engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) are at the cutting edge of science and technology but they are also a fact of everyday life; we use them, wear them, apply them and consume them. At NanoSafety Cluster, collaborative projects at the European level are brought together with a common aim to ensure the environmental health and safety of ENMs.

Professor Flemming Cassee chairs the hazard identification working-group at NanoSafety Cluster. A specialist in inhalation toxicology, Cassee currently holds positions at the Dutch Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) and the University of Utrecht. “I’ve been involved with NanoSafety from the start”, states Cassee, “and I think what we do is very valuable.” An initiative of the EC’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, NanoSafety provides crucial information that informs regulation and policy making regarding the production of ENMs.

Synergy and sharing

Synergy between projects is key to moving ENM production forwards. The alternative can mean a proliferation of projects in similar veins, resulting in unnecessary repetition and duplication. Cassee explains: “One of the main purposes of the cluster is to ensure that there isn’t too much overlap. For instance, it takes a lot of time to develop a good standard operating procedure. It’s better that other people can then use that procedure instead of spending a long time developing one themselves.” As well as increasing efficiency, the coordinated activities of the cluster’s participants allows broader, overarching questions to be asked by regulators and policy makers about, for instance, emerging issues or strategies for funding research. And organised the way it is, the NanoSafety Cluster is in a good position to look for the answers.

Common goals

Among the FP7 projects involved with the NanoSafety Cluster are NANOSOLUTIONS and NanoMILE, each working toward the development of a universally applicable framework for nanosafety. NANOSOLUTIONS’ ultimate goal is a safety classification model for ENMs derived from an understanding of their interactions with living organisms. Armed with a classification model, scientists would be able to assess toxicity and predict the harmful effects of ENMs across species. Without prediction, hazard assessments occur when products are scaled up close to the market, a blow to companies invested in materials that fail. Cassee is working in a similar field with NanoMILE. “Here we are trying to identify the mechanisms of action than can cause toxicity of nanomaterials, looking at both human toxicology and ecotoxicology,” he explains. “What we are trying to do now is make sure that all the info we have about the hazards of nanomaterials is used in the design phase.”

Under the aegis of the NanoSafety Cluster, these projects are able to exchange data, methods, ideas and experiences with each other. By encouraging a deeper understanding of these issues, collaboration at the NanoSafety Cluster is improving innovation and removing bottlenecks for environmentally healthier and safer ENMs.

Goal of Meeting

The meeting will discuss the data and methods exchange between NANOSOLUTIONS-NanoMILE. The aim is also to discuss current status of high throughput & “omics” approaches as alternative methods in nanosafety assessment, with the goal of exchange ideas, opinions and experiences in order to reach consensus on: (i) terminology, (ii) an agreed understanding of the current limitation of the approaches for different classes of nanomaterials; and (iii) specific aspects of the workflows / protocols that need to be adjusted when handling nanomaterials compared to molecular chemicals, i.e. where the nano-aspects matter presented in a manner that is useful for regulators and decision makers.

Format and outputs

Breakout groups are structured around four separate discussion topics (see detailed programme), and each topic discussion will be led by members from the two projects (NanoMILE and NANOSOLUTIONS) with summaries reported back in a plenary session with action items to be agreed. The outputs from the meeting will be a clear plan for data/methods exchange and a joint summary paper capturing the terminology, workflow adjustments and applicability to different classes of nanomaterials. Furthermore, a white paper will be drafted on steps needed to translate high-content analysis and omics approaches into regulatory testing frameworks and initial roadmap to achieving this.

Click here for more information

Conference highlights

• 10 Scientific Sessions
• 5 Keynote presentations
• Stakeholders workshop
• Over 300 attendees
• Conference topics
• Hazard assessment along the life cycle of nano-enabled products
• Exposure assessment along the life cycle of nano-enabled products
• Risk assessment & management
• Systems biology approaches in nanosafety
• Categorization & grouping of nanomaterials
• Safe by design

Stakeholders workshop

The conference will be wrapped up with a stakeholder workshop which will provide a platform for an open discussion with interested stakeholders that could ultimately guide the research needs that should be addressed in future projects.

The event will be held on 7 – 9 February 2017 in Malaga, Spain. For more information please visit www.nmsaconference.eu