Platform Optimisation To Enable NanomaTerIAL safety assessment for rapid commercialisation

Advanced Nanomaterials (Ad-NMs) will lead a new industrial revolution and accelerate the transition to greener technologies and better health care. However, lack of practical and reliable protocols to evaluate Ad-NMs' potential hazards and risks has hindered innovation so far.

POTENTIAL will generate a methodological framework comprising a set of harmonised protocols for characterisation, testing, grouping and read-across of Ad-NMs, that meet regulatory requirements for risk assessment, by improving:

a) Advanced imaging protocols to quantify and characterize the intrinsic and extrinsic properties of Ad-NMs in complex matrices, using conventional analytical methods.

b) Protocols to trace the evolution of Ad-NMs properties throughout their lifecycle, and methodologies for accelerated testing.

c) in vitro multi-cellular models, in vivo (invertebrate) models, and ecotoxicological models for assessing the environmental and health hazard of Ad-NMs.

Grouping and read-across approaches will build up on results from existing Horizon initiatives (GRACIOUS, SUNSHINE and HARMLESS), and will generate novel algorithms for similarity assessment, grouping hypotheses and Integrated Approaches to Testing and Assessments (IATAs).

The protocols generated in the project will be validated through peer-reviewed publications and disseminated in Open Access. Furthermore, we will engage with the relevant standardisation bodies and organisations (OECD, ISO, CEN) to ensure that our approach can be translated into industry standards.

The consortium comprises 11 European partners and 1 international partner (China), among which 4 high-tech SMEs specialised in Ad-NMs, and a high-tech incubator / accelerator. POTENTIAL contributes to the Horizon Europe workprogram by helping establish appropriate methods for cost-efficient assessment and prediction of the health and environmental effects of Ad-NMs, as well as supporting the inclusion of new methods to support safe-and-sustainable-by-design.