The European Society for Alternatives to Animal Testing (EUSAAT) hosted the “EUSAAT 2013 - Linz 2013” congress, which is one of the major scientific events in the field of the 3Rs (replace, reduce, refine animal tests). From September 15 – 18, 2013 experts from Europe, USA and Japan met at Johannes-Keppler-University in Linz, Austria. This year, a special day was dedicated to the annual meeting of the FP7 project ESNATS (Embryonic Stem cell-based Novel Alternative Testing Strategies). The conference programme included oral and poster sessions on animal-free disease models, non-animal tools for basic biomedical research, toxicity endpoints, Tox21, -omics techniques and advanced 3D models including recent progress on developing a “human-on-a-chip”.

During the poster session “3Rs go 3D” Dr. Fozia Noor, co-coordinator of NOTOX, presented the potential of in vitro alternative methods, focusing on 3D organotypic cultures of liver cells in toxicological studies. Prof. Jan Hengstler (IfADo), partner of NOTOX and ESNATS, gave insights in the ESNATS hESC-based toxicity biomarker identification study based on transcriptomics data.

In summary, there were fruitful discussions and lively exchange of new ideas for the benefit of alternative methods to animal experiments.