EPAA’s ‘NAM Designathon 2023’ challenge for human toxicity sought to identify a classification system capable of categorising chemicals based on their bioactivity and bioavailability properties determined using non-animal methodologies (Worth et al. 2025). The proposal is made to classify chemicals into three levels of concern: low concern could be used without restriction, medium concern requiring assessment to establish safe...

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) attacks the corticomotor system, with motor cortex function affected early in disease. Younger females have a lower relative risk of succumbing to ALS than males and older females, implicating a role for female sex hormones in disease progression. However, the mechanisms driving this dimorphic incidence are still largely unknown. We endeavoured to determine if estrogen mitigates disease prog...

Ageing leaves characteristic traces in the DNA methylation make-up of the genome. However, the importance of DNA methylation in ageing remains unclear. The study of subtelomeric regions could give promising insights into this issue. Previously reported associations between susceptibility to age-related diseases and epigenetic instability at subtelomeres suggest that the DNA methylation profile of subtelomeres undergoes remodel...