Many of you might already enjoy a nice summer break or will do that soon during the next weeks or months. Let’s hope that corona allows us to leave our computers and relax after a busy period with many online meetings. One of those meetings was the annual EUROoCS 2021 conference with more than 430 participants from 26 different countries, 6 keynotes, 40 lectures and 170 posters, thanks to the excellent organization and hosting by Maria Tenje from Uppsala University. hDMT researcher Ulgu Arslan from Leiden University Medical Center received the ‘Best Presentation Award’ for her talk about ‘Vascularized three-dimensional cardiac microtissue-on-chip’. Christine Mummery (Leiden University Medical Center) handed over the chair of EUROoCS to Peter Loskill from University of Tübingen, and Andries van der Meer (University of Twente) was appointed as the new vice-chair. We would like to encourage you to watch the movie, that was shown during the conference, with a presentation of eight nation-wide networks on Organ-on-Chip in Europe, including hDMT. With this growing community spirit we look forward to meeting you all in person again in Grenoble, France for the EUROoCS 2022 annual event.
We would like to recommend registration for the online 11th World Congress on Alternative and Animal Use in Life Science, that will take place from 23 August to 2 September 2021. You will have the possibility to join a spectacular first keynote of ESA astronaut André Kuipers, many exciting sessions on Organ-on-Chip, and other interesting topics in the field of 3Rs science. Also please have a look at YOU-WC11, which is especially designed for early-career scientists in this field to stimulate the dialogue with their colleagues and experienced peers, thereby creating the opportunity for establishing new professional networks.
Congratulations to all grant and award winners, in particular Bob van de Water from Leiden University, coordinator of the Risk-Hunt3R project, who received 23 million euro from the European Commission for toxicity testing of chemical substances without animals. A warm welcome also to new researchers in the hDMT Consortium. On November 12th 2021 we organize the annual hDMT Consortium meeting in Amersfoort, where all recent research results and developments within hDMT will be discussed and new collaborations will start.
We wish you all a very nice summer period in good health.
Executive Board hDMT
Christine Mummery, Berend van Meer and Janny van den Eijnden-van Raaij
