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In the published article, there was an error. In Section 5 an erroneous entry was introduced, indicating an opposite effect of what was shown in the reference referring to that entry. A correction has been made to ‘5 Measures for obesogenic effects of MDCs’, paragraph 2. This sentence previously started: “In contrast, in human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs), BPA alternatives attenuated adipogenesis (Norgren et al., 2022), stressing the importance to research mechanisms and variable exposure scenarios.” The corrected sentence appears below: “In contrast, in human bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs), BPA alternatives induced adipogenesis (Norgren et al., 2022), stressing the importance to research mechanisms and variable exposure scenarios.” The authors apologize for this error and state that this does not change the scientific conclusions of the article in any way. The original article has been updated.

In past times, the analysis of endocrine disrupting properties of chemicals has mainly been focused on (anti-)estrogenic or (anti-)androgenic properties, as well as on aspects of steroidogenesis and the modulation of thyroid signaling. More recently, disruption of energy metabolism and related signaling pathways by exogenous substances, so-called metabolism-disrupting chemicals (MDCs) have come into focus. While general effects such as body and organ weight changes are routinely monitored in animal studies, there is a clear lack of mechanistic test systems to determine and characterize the metabolism-disrupting potential of chemicals. In order to contribute to filling this gap, one of the project within EU-funded Partnership for the Assessment of Risks of Chemicals (PARC) aims at developing novel in vitro methods for the detection of endocrine metabolic disruptors. Efforts will comprise projects related to specific signaling pathways, for example, involving mTOR or xenobiotic-sensing nuclear receptors, studies on hepatocytes, adipocytes and pancreatic beta cells covering metabolic and morphological endpoints, as well as metabolism-related zebrafish-based tests as an alternative to classic rodent bioassays. This paper provides an overview of the approaches and methods of these PARC projects and how this will contribute to the improvement of the toxicological toolbox to identify substances with endocrine disrupting properties and to decipher their mechanisms of action.

New approach methodologies (NAMs) have the potential to become a major component of regulatory risk assessment, however, their actual implementation is challenging. The European Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals (PARC) was designed to address many of the challenges that exist for the development and implementation of NAMs in modern chemical risk assessment. PARC's proximity to national and European regulatory agencies is envisioned to ensure that all the research and innovation projects that are initiated within PARC agree with actual regulatory needs. One of the main aims of PARC is to develop innovative methodologies that will directly aid chemical hazard identification, risk assessment, and regulation/policy. This will facilitate the development of NAMs for use in risk assessment, as well as the transition from an endpoint-based animal testing strategy to a more mechanistic-based NAMs testing strategy, as foreseen by the Tox21 and the EU Chemical's Strategy for Sustainability. This work falls under work package 5 (WP5) of the PARC initiative. There are three different tasks within WP5, and this paper is a general overview of the five main projects in the Task 5.2 'Innovative Tools and methods for Toxicity Testing,' with a focus on Human Health. This task will bridge essential regulatory data gaps pertaining to the assessment of toxicological prioritized endpoints such as non-genotoxic carcinogenicity, immunotoxicity, endocrine disruption (mainly thyroid), metabolic disruption, and (developmental and adult) neurotoxicity, thereby leveraging OECD's and PARC's AOP frameworks. This is intended to provide regulatory risk assessors and industry stakeholders with relevant, affordable and reliable assessment tools that will ultimately contribute to the application of next-generation risk assessment (NGRA) in Europe and worldwide.

EFSA's aim by 2030, is that the Agency and its partners will be equipped for the routine implementation of human health risk assessment to multiple chemicals, across EFSA's domains of activity. To facilitate this effort, a roadmap for action has been developed by mapping the methods, data and tools that are currently available for mixture risk assessment and identifying current scientific gaps including challenges and blockers. The results shows that extensive methods, data and tools are available for dietary mixture risk assessment for pesticides, but that several scientific gaps still exist for the non-dietary mixture exposure to pesticides. For food additives and for certain contaminants, the regulatory readiness for mixture risk assessment was also found to be fairly high compared to food contact materials and cross-silo mixture risk assessment. The scientific gaps identified were prioritised according to their impact on the implementation of mixture risk assessment and, as a result, ten multi-annual project proposals were defined to address these scientific gaps on the short-term, mid-term and long-term. The roadmap also proposes and prioritises a number of working areas in the regulatory domains of pesticides, food contact materials, contaminants, food additives, as well as in the overarching domain of chemicals. Besides the scientific proposals, recommendations to improve stakeholder engagement and communication on mixture risk assessment was investigated. These included, among others, creating an online catalogue of tools, methods and data for mixture risk assessment, as well as the organisation of regular webinars/workshop to promote exchange of information between stakeholders and making more efficient use of national communication hubs for food safety in communicating with the general public.