Predictive toxicology and ecotoxicology within the ANTIOPES network

Abstract

The ANTIOPES network has organized on March 19th and 20th 2012 a Symposium in Avignon which has been attended by 150 participants. The scientific meeting was focused on one of its main project, the predictive ecotoxicology and toxicology, in order to produce a comprehensive update on technical and scientific innovations required for main challenges of chemical safety assessment: nanoparticles mainly on barriers and compartmentalization, relevance of biomarkers in endocrine disruption, and multiple stressor and vulnerability problem. In a last part of this scientific meeting, certification and translational research aspects to regulation have been highlighted. Underlying the symposium, specific projects developed in the frame of the implementation of the Operational Research Comity of the French Grenelle of Environment have been presented. In this special issue, original data from the selected projects in predictive toxicology and ecotoxicology are presented. The first three articles are dealing with concepts applied to the above subject. Bado-Nilles et al. present a study dealing with lysosomal membrane stability. This work proposes two more rapid, efficient, and sensitive sample analyses using flow cytometry method. Lysosomal presence and lysosomal membrane integrity (LMI) were evaluated on the three-spined stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus (L.), a well-described model fish species for aquatic ecotoxicology studies. The designed immunomarkers were shown clearly modulated by pollutants and their variations seemed to be correlated with leucocyte mortality. Thus, from a practical point of view, lysosomal presence and LMI may provide novel and efficient means of evaluating immune capacities and indicating the toxic effects of environmental pollution. The next article from Zalko et al. is exploring complex mixtures of contaminants present in environment and in food chain with potential adverse effects on human health and wildlife. These authors explored the possibility to use Nuclear Receptor-based affinity columns to characterize the presence of bioactive molecules in environmental complex mixtures (mainly endocrine disruptor compounds). Estrogen Receptorα-based affinity columns were used to trap and purify estrogenic substances present in surface sediment samples collected in a French river under mixed anthropogenic pressure. Biological, biochemical, and analytical approaches were combined to characterize the structure of ligands retained on columns and demonstrate the presence of known active molecules such as bisphenol A and Responsible editor: Philippe Garrigues