Green Deal Cluster Projects
To go far, go with others…
We Are in Good Company
Chemicals are present in many everyday consumer and professional products, as well as in pharmaceuticals, food and feed. As a response to these concerns of the people and aiming at ambitious environmental objectives by 2030, the European Commission launched 2019 Europe’s Green Deal. The Green Deal aims ‘Towards a zero-pollution ambition for a toxic free environment’ in Europe.
A Green Deal Chemical Strategy for Sustainability was launched in early 2021, directly targeting the protection of humans and the environment against hazardous and very persistent chemicals.
The LifeSaver project collaborates with the following chemical cluster projects to promote synergies, harmonisation of approaches, exchange of knowledge, data and practices and joint communication and dissemination activities to address the specific needs and achieve the goals set out in the Green Deal strategies by 2030.
Cluster Projects
SCENARIOS is a 4-year H2020 Research and Innovation project RIA) involving 19 partners from 10 European countries and Israel.
The goal is to close the knowledge gap and achieve breakthrough TRL advances in the toxicology, detection and remediation of probably the most objectionable and widespread class of contaminants -PFAS-, with an unprecedented energetic balance and virtually no external chemical additives.
A major effort is underway to develop Integrated Approaches to Testing and Assessment (IATA) of PFAS, including the new generation of congeners, to assist EC and EU countries in decision-making on these substances for environmental safety and human health.
The ALTERNATIVE project develops an innovative platform and an integrated approach for testing and assessment of the potential of chemicals to induce cardiotoxicity. The novel approach will strengthen the capacity of regulators and industry to prevent cardiotoxic co-exposures to industrial chemicals and pharmaceuticals in an effective way.
ALTERNATIVE is a three-year Horizon 2020 research project launched in October 2021. It is performed by an international consortium of 11 organisations, coordinated by Politecnico di Torino
ZeroPM: Zero pollution of Persistent and Mobile substances, will interlink and synergize prevention, prioritization and removal strategies to protect the environment and human health from persistent, mobile (PM) substances. To do this, ZeroPM will establish an evidence-based multilevel framework to guide policy, technological and market incentives to minimize use, emissions and pollution of groups of PM substances.
To Prevent, ZeroPM will develop scientific, policy and market tools for the substitution and mitigation of prioritized PM substances to safer and sustainable alternatives To Prioritize, ZeroPM will identify the groups of PM substances requiring the most urgent action. To Remove, ZeroPM will explore real-word scale remediation solutions and find their sustainability limits. By taking this systemic approach, the EU will be better able to avoid regrettable substitution – substituting one problematic chemical for another -and regrettable remediation – investing in remediation efforts more that cause more damage than the substance itself.
The GreenDeal consortium ‘PANORAMIX’ (2021-2025) was formed to initiate a European-led innovation effort to mobilize the scientific progress made in recent years and to close critical gaps in mixture risk assessment of chemicals throughout the environment-food-human continuum.
We will address the above-mentioned key problems by show-casing a novel experimental path (based on in vitro tests and chem ID screening) towards identifying and quantifying the risk of chemical mixtures in real-life scenarios across water, food, and human samples.
Next, our aim is to evaluate the current human risk posed by chemical mixtures by evaluating case studies based on real-life exposure scenarios and to develop ready-to-use tools for mixture risk assessment that can form the basis for future regulations.
Preventing Recalcitrant Organic Mobile Industrial chemicalS for Circular Economy in the Soil-sediment-water system – will provide innovative technologies to monitor, prevent and mitigate chemical pollution in the environment (water, soil, and sediment). The project will particularly focus on PFAS, which are persistent, highly mobile, and potentially toxic and have been found to accumulate in the human body and the environment.
PROMISCES’ results will be integrated in a decision support framework, as well as assessment and regulatory tools for improving human health protection related to resource recovery and use.
RELATED PROJECTS AND INITIATIVES
The International Network for Translating Research on Perinatal Derivatives into Therapeutic Approaches – SPRINT is a COST (Cooperation in Science and Technology) project that allows excellent researchers and clinicians in the field of innovation to cooperate and jointly develop their ideas in science and technology sectors.
The SPRINT project, proposed and coordinated by Professor Ornella Parolini (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Rome, Italy), brings academic, clinical, and industrial experts from over 30 countries. In the last decade, different perinatal derivatives (such as placenta-derived cells and the bioactive factors secreted by these cells) have proven therapeutically effective.
SPRINT deals with different issues that must be faced to ensure optimal research results and interpretation of clinical trial data. These include obtaining consensus for the nomenclature and the optimal techniques for the isolation, characterisation, cryopreservation, and expansion of perinatal derivatives. SPRINT also addresses more complex issues, such as understanding mechanisms and therapeutic actions of perinatal derivatives and collecting primary research data helpful in designing clinical trials.
The International Placenta Stem Cell Society (IPLASS) is an international scientific organization which is open to scientists who are working in, or who have previously worked in the field of placenta-derived stem cells. IPLASS was established in 2009 by a group of fourteen scientists representing nine different Countries (USA, China, Australia, India, Italy, France, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland), with the purpose of becoming a worldwide networking platform for research into placenta-derived stem cells.
The main objective of IPLASS is to promote research on all aspects related to knowledge, experimentation and clinical use of placenta-derived stem cells. To this end, IPLASS aims to create a network between the groups which are scattered all over the world who work on stem cells derived from placenta, and to bridge this placenta network with other existing networks focused on stem cell biology or therapeutic applications.