This webinar is organized by the Nederlandse Vereniging voor Toxicologie (Dutch Society for Toxicology) Section Genetic Toxicology.

Genetic toxicology is a crucial part of safety assessment of novel pharmaceutical products, chemicals, cosmetics and food products. The potential of a substance to induce gene mutations is a key part of the genotoxicity testing strategy. Gene mutations in somatic cells can lead to cancer and other severe diseases. Mutations in the germ line can cause hereditary diseases.

The mutagenic properties of substances are currently measured in vitro by the bacterial reverse mutation (Ames) test and various gene mutation assays in mammalian cells. Different transgenic rodent models, like Big Blue and Mutamouse, as well as the PigA assay are applied to assess the mutagenic potency of compounds in vivo. Although these assays have proven their value in mutagenicity risk assessment, the relevance of some of these models for humans, assay availability and the (social) pressure to reduce animal testing pushes the development and implementation of next-generation methods for mutagenicity assessment, such as DNA sequencing.

Error-corrected DNA sequencing (ECS) dramatically improves the accuracy of next-generation sequencing technologies. ECS is based on deep sequencing of both DNA strands that can be combined to distinguish between genuine gene mutations and DNA sequencing errors that occur during the amplification and sequencing reactions. ECS can detect rare gene mutations that are caused by chemical exposure at a frequency of 1 in 10 million. ECS can be applied using various tissues from any in vivo tox study, eliminating the necessity to run a dedicated TGR mutation study. ECS can also be applied in vitro in any relevant cell line.

ECS is currently under evaluation by numerous academic and industry laboratories as alternative approach for mutagenesis assessment. First results confirm the accuracy and sensitivity of ECS to detect chemically-induced mutations in animals and in cell lines. ECS is currently under review by OECD to explore regulatory applications.

During the webinar, you will learn about ECS and its latest developments, in vivo and in vitro applications of the ECS technologies and case studies.

Presentations:

• Dr Sujath Abbas- Principal scientist at GSK: ECS- A disruptive technology unravelling true mutations: Application in NDMA mutagenesis 
• Dr. Francesco Marchetti – Research professor at the Environmental Health Centre, Health Canada: Application of error-corrected sequencing for in vivo regulatory mutagenicity testing
• Dr. Inger Brandsma, Director genetic toxicology at Toxys: Validation of MutaTracker, a novel approach method for the detection of gene mutations using error-corrected NGS

Webinar on DNA sequencing technologies

When: 28 October 2025, 3:00-4:30 pm CET