Week of PARC in Tartu
Uko Maran
The week of June 9, 2025 can be considered a PARC (Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals) week in Tartu. Namely, two high-caliber PARC events took place during the week.
The first of these was the PARC Modelers' Meeting, which took place from June 9-11, 2025. The PARC Modelers' Meeting brought together modelers and data managers from various PARC work packages (5, 6, 7, and 8) as well as those involved in related activities in other work packages (e.g., 4 and 9).
The primary goal was to review progress to date, present future plans, and identify broader synergies in the rapidly evolving field of chemical risk assessment (CRA). The meeting featured focused presentations and interactive discussion in breakout sessions.
The meeting concentrated on five core modelling areas:
- Physiologically Based Kinetic (PBK) Models: Covering both toxicokinetic and pharmacokinetic models.
- Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships (QSAR): Including modern Machine Learning and Artificial Neural Network approaches.
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) in CRA: Focusing on other than QSAR applications in Chemical Risk Assessment.
- Exposure Models: Exploring advancements in modelling exposure.
- Making our Data and Models FAIR: Addressing challenges and opportunities in data and model organization and integration to support CRA.
PARC Modelers’ Meeting program was consolidated by the organizing committee of the meeting:
- Philip Marx-Stoelting (BfR, German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment),
- Gilles Riviere (ANSES, French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety),
- Iseult Lynch, (Univ. Birmingham),
- Vikas Kumar (BfR, German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment),
- Sulev Sild (Univ. Tartu),
- Tomasz Puzyn (Univ. Gdansk),
- Emilio Benfenati (IRFMN),
- Spyros Karakitsios (Aristotle Univ. Thessaloniki),
- Uko Maran (Univ. Tartu).
Meeting started with the Plenary and Panel discussion on "Regulatory acceptance of modelling tools". Plenary was given by the Jean-Lou Dorne (EFSA, European Food Safety Authority [https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en]). Panelist were Jean-Lou Dorne (EFSA), Salvador Moncho Escriva (ECHA, European Chemical Agency), Sylvia Escher (Fraunhofer-ITEM, Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine), Tomasz Puzyn (Univ. Gdansk) and panel was moderated by Uko Maran (Univ. Tartu). During the meeting 30 presentations were listened to and discussed. The number of participants on-site and on-line were 90.
The second event was the PARC WP7 annual meeting, which took place from June 11 to June 13, 2025. Annual meeting concentrated on past year activities, among them for instance: how can FAIR principles contribute to sustainability of data in chemical risk assessment (CRA), FAIRification solutions to facilitate environmental chemical risk assessment, alternative predictive testing strategy for the safety of chemicals, PARC data hub, etc., and outlooks for Year 4 and Year 5 of the PARC project.
Both meetings were hosted by the Chair of Molecular Technology of the Institute of Chemistry of the University of Tartu and its organizing team, that included Geven Piir and Selma Zukić in addition to Sulev and Uko.
