Results

OBERON will address one of the major EU issues in the environment and health field. Indeed, endocrine disruptors are among the most hazardous substances and their impact on metabolic diseases and obesity is among the most worrying outcomes at the sanitary, social and economic levels. Agreeing on criteria for ED definition is an important step, but, in practice, it is critical to identify the right tests to faithfully identify health outcomes.

The overall impact of OBERON will be to improve risk assessment of endocrine disruptors using test systems in line with regulatory requirements, with a focus on metabolic disorders. With the involvement of regulatory bodies, the proposed policy-driven project will combine multi-disciplinary sciences. OBERON will therefore generate a range of impacts that are described below. Expected impacts will also include communication, dissemination and exploitation of the developed test systems, mechanistic findings and biomarkers.

The direct impacts will be:

• To set up and make available an innovative battery of new, easy to use, effective and validated test systems, combining different experimental and computational strategies, to be used for regulatory aspects regarding ED assessment in relation to metabolic disorders.
• To improve knowledge on EDs based on data generated by OBERON in cell biology, zebrafish, omics technologies and systems biology. Novel mechanistic knowledge will be established, allowing development of novel Adverse Outcome Pathways (AOPs), as well as integration of information in existing AOPs, and identification of novel biomarkers to improve risk assessment frameworks for human health effects.

Forthcoming