The Society is grateful to the Colgate-Palmolive Company and Syngenta for their longtime support of awards that facilitate research by SOT members. The recipients of the 2020 SOT Supported Awards will be recognized during the Awards Ceremony of the 59th Annual Meeting and ToxExpo, to take place on Sunday, March 15, 2020, from 5:15 pm to 6:30 pm.
Colgate-Palmolive Awards
Marco Franco, MS, has received the 2020 Colgate-Palmolive Award for Student Research Training in Alternative Methods, the purpose of which is to enhance graduate student research training using in vitro methods or alternative techniques to replace the use of animals in toxicological research. Mr. Franco will use this support for his project entitled “Microfluidic Models for the Screening of Environmental Pollutants and Their Toxicological Effects in Aquatic Ecosystems.”
In addition, the 2020 Colgate-Palmolive Grant for Alternative Research has been awarded to Lena Smirnova, PhD, of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing. This grant, which identifies and supports efforts that promote, develop, refine, or validate scientifically acceptable animal alternative methods to facilitate the safety assessment of new chemicals and formulation, will support Dr. Smirnova’s project “Automated Synaptogenesis Screening in In Vitro Human 3D BrainSphere Model to Assess Developmental Neurotoxicity.”
Two Colgate-Palmolive Postdoctoral Fellowship Awards in In Vitro Toxicology were awarded in 2020, to Souvarish Sarkar, PhD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Niyati Vachharajani, PhD, of the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy. Dr. Sarkar’s project will examine “A Gene-Environment Multiplex System Identifies Novel Interactions among LRRK2, Rotenone, and α-Synuclein,” and Dr. Vachharajani’s project will explore “A Quantitative In Vitro Approach to Assess the Impact of Human Hepatocyte-Derived Exosomes on Immune Response in Idiosyncratic Drug-Induced Liver Injury.”
Syngenta Fellowship Award
Kumari Itishree Kaushik, MS, of the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, has received the 2020 Syngenta Fellowship Award in Human Health Applications of New Technologies for her project entitled “Moxidectin: A Promising Candidate for the Management of Pediatric Medulloblastoma.” This award, presented to either a third-year (or later) graduate student or a postdoctoral trainee, supports mode-of-action research aimed at characterizing dose-dependent effects of xenobiotics on mammalian systems in such a way that the causal sequence of key events underlying toxicity is elucidated.
