The highly successful FutureTox (aka, the Star Wars of Toxicology) Contemporary Concepts in Toxicology (CCT) series is back in 2020 with the fifth installment, “FutureTox V: New Technologies to Evaluate Organ-Specific Effects of Drugs and Chemicals.” This sequel goes back to the future to ask questions such as “What is hot in biomedical sciences?” and “Are we ready to use these new tools for decision-making in regulatory toxicology?”
For example, as SOT members Lorna Ewart and Adrian Roth mention in the February 24, 2020, issue of Nature Reviews Drug Discovery: “Using human-relevant, translational in vitro models is widely considered to reduce attrition during drug discovery and development. Despite this, the adoption of models based on microphysiological systems—organs-on-chips or organoids—by pharma companies is moderate at best, and realizing the full potential of these models will need greater collaboration between stakeholders.
Indeed, the organizing committee of the FutureTox V meeting reasoned that most toxicology meetings or sessions at the SOT Annual Meeting focus on either a technology (e.g., MPS) or a tissue (e.g., heart). These can create silos where basic researchers, engineers, toxicologists, clinicians, and data scientists do not mix. FutureTox V will build a bridge between these domains by focusing on tissue biology of interest in contemporary toxicology and discussing new technologies and strategies that are being used to improve, reduce, and/or replace animal testing (3Rs). We also will have presentations and a breakout group on computational analysis, data science, and artificial intelligence. For example, new technologies will need to be developed to meet the computational challenges that genomics poses for the near future, given highly distributed data acquisition that involves heterogeneous formats, as well as emerging opportunities for data reduction and real-time analysis.
We hope to see you at FutureTox V, November 18–19, 2020, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The agenda for this meeting is already posted online, and registration will open in June 2020.
