Registration Details
Tuesday 3 March, 13.00 – 14.00 (GMT)/14.00 – 15.00 (CET)
The NC3Rs Virtual Second Species CRACK IT Challenge is exploiting advances in computational approaches and machine learning to develop a 'Virtual Dog' – ultimately aiming replace the dog in chronic toxicity studies. A team led by Stephan Schaller, ESQlabs, was awarded the contract to deliver the project in February 2023.
As part of VICT3R’s ‘Virtually Speaking’ webinar series, Alexander Kulesza from ESQlabs will present their progress developing a suite of virtual dog tissues and organs to model toxicological endpoints. Alex will share the Virtual Second Species system architecture, current implementation status and future applications to improve prediction of chronic and idiosyncratic toxicities and minimise the need for long term non-clinical safety studies in dogs.
About VICT3R
VICT3R is an EU-funded project that aims to reduce animal use in toxicology research through using existing data to develop virtual control groups. Their ‘Virtually Speaking’ webinar series brings together experts from across industries and disciplines to spark discussion, share insights and encourage collaboration.
About the Challenge
The aim of the Virtual Second Species CRACK IT Challenge is to apply advanced computational and mathematical modelling approaches to develop a ‘Virtual Dog’ that can be used to model toxicological endpoints for new chemical entities. The Challenge builds on work from the NC3Rs toxicology programme that, in collaboration with over 30 pharmaceutical companies and regulatory bodies, analysed the use of two species in regulatory toxicology and identified opportunities to use a single rodent species for certain drug modalities. We awarded ESQlabs £1.6M to deliver the Virtual Second Species Challenge, which is sponsored by seven pharmaceutical industry Sponsors from the UK, mainland Europe and North America.