In an article published on December 6, 2018, the National Food Institute of the Technical University of Denmark (DTU Food) announced that it will play a key role in two EU Horizon 2020 research projects beginning in 2019, focusing on endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs). Together with eleven other partner institutions, the first project named FREIA will focus on examining how environmental chemicals can affect the ability of women to have children and on protecting women’s reproductive health. This includes generating new data on the effects of chemicals on ovaries as well as puberty in animal models, and creation of QSAR models to predict harmful effects.

The second project, named ATHENA, will focus on developing screening methods to identify chemical substances that can affect the production and function of thyroid hormones. This will involve generating new data through animal studies, where DTU Food researchers will focus on analyzing the effects of animal brain development and develop QSAR modeling for metabolic hormones. Members of the nine other partner institutions will analyze other tissue types.

Both projects have an allocated budget of €12 million and are set to run for five years beginning in 2019.

Earlier research from DTU Food identified additional substances that can be considered EDCs based on EU criteria (FPF reported).

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Miriam Meister (December 6, 2018). “New knowledge to protect against endocrine disrupting chemicals.DTU Food

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