No more animal testing – FHAIVE uses data-driven methods to improve chemical safety and drug efficacy

Can you guess how often a new chemical is developed in the world? According to OECD estimates, this happens on average every four hours, which means six new chemicals per day and more than two thousand new chemicals per year.

Dario Greco, professor of bioinformatics at Tampere University, says that time and resources are by no means sufficient to test the safety of all these chemicals using the current methods.

“The safety assessment for one chemical can take up to 5–7 years with traditional methods. This is not sustainable from the industry point of view,” Greco says.

Traditionally, the safety of chemicals is tested using animal experiments, which are not only time-consuming and expensive, but also ethically challenging. In addition, they can be scientifically inaccurate.

“People are not mice. Things we learn in animal models may not reliably predict what happens in humans. That’s why we need better methods for testing chemicals,” he explains.

Greco leads the FHAIVE research centre (The Finnish Hub for Development and Validation of Integrated Approaches) at Tampere University. FHAIVE acts as the national reference laboratory for validating alternative methods to animal experiments in Finland. At the same time, FHAIVE conducts cutting-edge research in the field of toxicology and bioinformatics.

When Greco started his career at Tampere University in 2017, his research group consisted of three members. Now the funding of his group is over 15 million euros, and his team includes around 35 researchers, growing towards 40 by 2025.

“Our fingerprint is to investigate and model the complexity that governs how living beings respond to environmental cues by applying novel systems biology approaches. Our research addresses urgent challenges of industrial innovation and sustainability in a unique way,” Greco points out.

Artificial intelligence can predict whether a chemical is toxic

Tampere University offers an attractive environment for such research as it also hosts a Centre of Excellence that is developing body-on-a-chip technology mimicking the functioning of the human body.

FHAIVE has another, data-driven approach to the topic: How could all the information published in the world about the effects of chemicals on people and the environment be gathered? Could artificial intelligence sift through this information and help scientists develop more effective drugs and safer chemicals?

“We are systematically curating and integrating information that is currently fragmented in databases and literature by developing a Unified Knowledge Space (UKS), one of the few and biggest knowledge graphs in biomedicine worldwide. After that, we will harness artificial intelligence to go through this enormous amount of data and predict how chemicals affect people and the environment,” Greco explains.

Traditionally, when toxicology studies the effects of chemicals on human or animal health, it is done one species at a time. Greco’s research group has developed broader “One Health” or “Planetary Health” models, which examine how effects on one animal species also affect other species and the entire ecosystem.

Photo: Dario Greco

The ERC-funded ARCHIMEDES project is looking for an answer to whether artificial intelligence can predict new connections between chemicals and diseases. At the same time, the question is whether artificial intelligence could help researchers model the functioning of the human body in cell models even better.

“We use the data to suggest which cells we should study, and which molecules should be measured from them. Humans are left with critical thinking: our job is to see if the things artificial intelligence proposes make sense,” Greco summarises.

Cooperation with companies is needed

FHAIVE works closely with both authorities and commercial enterprises. The group’s largest projects are, for example, the EU IMI BIOMAP and EU HE INSIGHT, in which leading pharmaceutical and chemical industry companies participate.

The BIOMAP project studies the disease mechanisms of atopic dermatitis and psoriasis to develop new, more effective drugs for these skin diseases. The INSIGHT project, coordinated by Greco, develops data-driven methods to guide the development of new chemicals and materials that are safe and sustainable.

FHAIVE has also prominent roles in other EU projects, such as CHIASMA, where Greco is the deputy coordinator, and PINK, also aiming to advance chemicals and materials design and development.

Greco also coordinates the TULI project, financed by the European Food Safety Authority EFSA, which is developing new, animal-free methods for assessing food safety.

“After receiving the ERC Consolidator funding, our involvement in large international initiatives has multiplied, and more new projects will start in 2025,” he says.

According to Greco, it would be important in the field to increase collaboration between companies, authorities and academic researchers, so that new products can be brought to the market not only as quickly as possible, but also as safely as possible.

“The challenge is that we all speak slightly different languages. We must find ways to understand each other and cooperate. Everyone benefits from this,” he emphasises.

Better planet to the future generations

Dario Greco is from Italy, where he originally studied to become a doctor. However, a researcher's career won out, and through lucky coincidences he ended up in Finland, first as a student of genetics at the University of Helsinki and later as a tenure-track professor of bioinformatics in Tampere.

FHAIVE is already a leading facility in Finland and Europe. In the future, Greco wants to further expand the collaboration of FHAIVE with local companies to ensure sustainable innovation and to provide chemical and pharmaceutical industries with competitive advantages.

Greco’s ambition is to consolidate FHAIVE as an international central entity to ensure that academic, industrial and regulatory needs meet through scientific excellence.

“My dream is to leave a better planet for the future generations without compromising the innovations needed to solve the big problems that humankind is currently facing,” he says.