The 4th Asian Congress for Alternatives to Animal Experiments (4ACAAE) and 7th Annual Meeting of the Society for Alternatives to Animal Experiments India (SAAE-I) took place in Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, India from 12.12.-14.12.2024 (www.jamiahamdard.ac.in/4ACAAE) under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Y.J. Gupta and the Local Organizing Committee (LOC), led by Prof. Seikh Raisuddin (Organizing Secretary) supported by Prof. H.A. Khan, Prof. Suhel Parvez, Dr. Nidhi and many more wonderful people from his team. Winfried Neuhaus was invited as EUSAAT representative to the congress and gave a talk in the international session entitled “Overview about recent European 3Rs activities with a focus on 3Rs centres”, in which he took a closer look at current European developments in the 3Rs field with respect to the EC roadmap of phasing out animal studies and the response dynamics from several stakeholders, and the activities of EU3Rnet (network of European 3R centres) and the COST Action IMPROVE.
One of the highlights was the inauguration of the Asian Federation of Societies for Alternatives to Animal Experiments (AFSAAE, https://afsaae.org/) with the societies JSAAE, KSAAE, SAAE-I and TATT/CSOT from Japan, Korea, India and China as the founding members and international guest societies ASCCT, ESTIV, EUSAAT, HIS and SAAT-SL, who celebrated this major international milestone for the development of the 3Rs field globally together. The first chair of the AFSAAE became Prof. Dr. Yasuyuki Sakai.
During the congress the sessions dealt with topics such as “Toward animal-free science globally”, “Advancing lung disease research: Innovative alternative-to-animal models for testing anti-cancer and anti-infection therapies”, “Global Progress Through Collaboration: The role of validation projects in advancing NAMs in toxicology and related science”, “Advancing the adoption of NAMs in biomedical research“ “Empowering predictive toxicology“ “Development and distribution of alternative testing methods educational materials”, “Accelerating the application of non-animal approaches in toxicity testing of pesticides”, “Regulatory challenges replacing the use of animals in pyrogen testing for drugs and medical devices”, “Advances in biortechnology and toxicology”, “In vitro and microbioal technology”, “In silico systems, AI and ML in Alternatives research”, “Bioengineering, tissue engineering and 3D bioprinting” and “Invertebrate Alternatives” highlighting high-quality research and very new innovative approaches to work e.g. on toxicity research questions. The detailed programme could be read via: https://www.jamiahamdard.ac.in/4ACAAE/programme.html.
