VICT3R

Acronym: VICT3R
Title: Developing and implementing VIrtual Control groups To reducE animal use in toxicology Research

What is the VICT3R consortium about and what challenges does it address?
The VICT3R initiative is a public-private partnership that aims to transform nonclinical drug and chemical safety evaluation by developing and implementing Virtual Control Groups (VCGs) to replace animals in concurrent control groups (CCGs). By leveraging historical control data and advanced statistical and AI techniques, VICT3R seeks to reduce animal use in experimental studies while ensuring robust and reproducible safety assessments.

VCGs will not only reduce animal use, but also improve animal study practices, making drug development more efficient and benefiting public health. The project will create a repository providing valuable background values for histopathology, helping to distinguish between test item-related and spontaneous effects. This will reduce the need for additional animal studies by 25%.

Additionally, large datasets collected for clinical pathology reference values will enhance understanding of historical data shifts, making the data more useful for comparison. 
Improve drug development by better distinguishing between natural and treatment effects, VICT3R will also help to reduce costly mistakes. Thus, the project will create a large database of animal reference data.

Why is VICT3R important to VUB?
VICT3R aims to establish a strong network of collaborations with key stakeholders to ensure wide acceptance and implementation of the VCG concept in research and regulatory practice beyond the project life.  In this sense, three project partners, will contribute to achieving this goal.

The VUB, which leads the EU-funded ONTOX project focused on NAMs is also involved in the ASPIS cluster and in the PARC international partnership and playing a key role in promoting collaborations with other projects in the NAMs field. Additionally, a special collaboration will be established with the IMI Bigpicture project on digital pathology, which shares key partners with VICT3R.

The VUB will take the lead in training. This activity targets the consortium members, external end-users, and regulators on the VCG concept. Training will be provided in 3 formats:

• 1-day in-person training at annual project meetings for VICT3R partners on artificial intelligence and regulatory toxicology.
• 1.5-hour webinars for VICT3R partners and external parties on topics like NAMs and open science practices.
• 1-day hands-on workshops for external end-users and regulators on using VCGs.

Special attention will be given to young researchers, being the next generation that will apply VCGs and as such support sustainability.  Furthermore, all training events and materials will be turned into massive open online courses upon completion of VICT3R.