EU provisional agreement to update water-pollutant priority lists: PFAS, bisphenols, pesticides included

·       On 23 September 2025, Council of the EU and European Parliament reached a provisional deal to revise the list of “priority pollutants” for surface- and groundwater. The updated list adds PFAS (including TFA), certain bisphenols, pesticides, pharmaceuticals and more.

·       This revision strengthens environmental-quality standards, updates norms, and aims to align regulation with latest scientific evidence.

·       Member States will have until 2039 (or under certain conditions until 2045) to comply fully; for some substances, deadlines may be earlier (e.g. 2033) depending on new standards.

European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) advances PFAS restrictions under REACH & call from endocrine-health societies

·       In October 2025, ECHA announced that its “Socio-Economic Analysis Committee” (SEAC) would issue its draft opinion on the revised PFAS restriction proposal — a necessary step before final ban decisions.

·       On October 30, key medical bodies — European Society of Endocrinology (ESE), European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology (ESPE), and Endocrine Society — jointly urged regulators to adopt a universal PFAS restriction, emphasizing health risks and the need to phase out PFAS where safer alternatives exist.

Evidence PFAS exposure may cause endocrine disruption in women

·       A recent study (Dec 2025) published the  medical journal  JAMA Network Open found that high PFAS exposure in women is associated with altered hormone profiles — reinforcing concerns about PFAS as endocrine disruptors.

·       This strengthens calls from health & endocrine societies for stricter regulation and accelerated removal of PFAS from consumer products and the environment.

ANSES confirms widespread PFAS in French tap water

·       A major nationwide study (2023–2025) by ANSES found that 92 % of tap-water samples tested positive for a PFAS breakdown product, trifluoroacetic acid (TFA).

·       Beyond the 20 PFAS covered by the EU drinking-water directive, the agency also detected other PFAS and calls for a broader monitoring scheme.

·       The findings are a wake-up call for regulators: many PFAS remain unmonitored despite pervasive presence.

European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) & Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) — Update of QSAR Toolbox and support for non-animal hazard assessment methods

·       On 8 October 2025, a new version of the OECD QSAR Toolbox (4.8) was released. The update includes enhancements to structural data import, metabolism databases, and improved transparency and security.

·       The upgraded toolbox supports computational predictions of chemical hazards, which can help avoid or reduce animal testing — aligning with ambitions of non-animal methods for endocrine disruptor (ED) assessment.

Santé publique France — New national health-surveillance program on exposures and effects of endocrine disruptors

·       On 7 November 2025, Santé publique France published a design for a health-surveillance program focused on the health effects of exposure to endocrine disruptors (EDs). The program prioritizes certain health outcomes (e.g. neurodevelopmental disorders in children, metabolic issues, reproductive health).

·       This marks a stepping stone toward what may feed into the upcoming second National Strategy on Endocrine Disruptors (Stratégie nationale sur les perturbateurs endocriniens – SNPE2), reinforcing monitoring at population level.

Scientific conferences and consortia

American Society of Toxicology (SOT) 2025

Peppers is being recognized for its work in the validation of methods and bridging a significant gap in non-animal methods (NAMs) to bring these into the test guideline system and regulatory use. Director Philippe Hubert was an invited speaker at the American Society of Toxicology (SOT) 2025 meeting in March presenting Peppers work on readiness of methods for validation, a work that is anchored in the ReadEDtest tool.

AFARA conference

Peppers CSO Torben Österlund was an invited speaker at the Dutch consortium for reducing animal studies (AFARA) talking about the validation process and strategy at Pepper. He also gave a similar lecture at the UNIgreen/SupBiotech cell biology summer school (Biotechnological advances in monitoring of pollutions in the environment) in Paris in July.

Eurotox 2025

In September Torben attended the Eurotox 2025 conference in Athens, Greece. This was a fine opportunity to meet with many of our friends and collaborators as well as other key stakeholders. Torben presented a poster on our latest successful validation study and discussed several new methods that are relevant for validation.

Akademie Fresenius Conference Endocrine Disruptors  

Lastly, in November Torben was an invited speaker at the Akademie Fresenius Conference Endocrine Disruptors in Dusseldorf, Germany. Here he presented the Pepper strategy for assessing method readiness, the validation project process, and the test guideline process with OECD. This meeting was focused on EDs and the methods to discover these, a core part of Peppers’ business.

Miscellaneous

Apart from the conferences and symposia, Pepper is also actively involved in several initiatives on method validation in Europe including: The EU roadmap for phasing out animal use in research, the European Test Method & Validation Strategy, the pan European consortium NAMWISE, the OECD guidance document 34 updating, and the OECD Expert Group on steroidogenesis. In particular the NAMWISE project is key to Pepper since this consortium works on the NAM enhancement and Pepper is involved in two key work packages on NAM readiness and case stories, as well as the business model of validation.

The Pepper pipeline

This summer we announced the submission of the second validation report to OECD following a successful validation study and the report is currently undergoing peer review. We have since finalized a scientific article about the project and submitted for publication. This covers the Retinoic acid receptor transactivation assay out of INSERM/University of Montpellier. With this, Pepper have finalized four validation studies of which two have proceeded for review and test guideline drafting with OCED.

Pepper has a further 9 ongoing projects at different stages of validation, from an update of the TG456 on steroidogenesis since 2020, to the latest two projects just initiated this year. The project pipeline cover key methods in the ED space expanding the number of steroid receptor assays and other nuclear receptor transcription factor based assays, that all influence a wealth of important cell biology and have multiple adverse outcomes when disrupted. Another key area is the thyroid hormone regulation which can be addressed at many levels and for which we currently have two interesting projects. Pepper also have two projects in the developmental neuro-toxicity space that seek to determine adverse effects on neuronal development, an area that is of increasing interest in the ED space, since even subtle molecular effects can be of importance for the brain development of the embryo. These two methods belong the phenotypic types of assays that cover several cellular mechanisms.

The Pepper business

Strengthening the Pepper Model

Since its initiation in 2019 Pepper has had the business model of sponsoring validation studies by economically supporting participating laboratories and other key players that covers different aspects of each project. We engage a data manager and a statistician in each project to gather and analyze the submitted data, we seek advice from experts and our scientific council,  and we engage with the OECD for optimal interactions and progress. The economic support comes from our founding members and other supporting partners that are keen to support validation of methods. These are French ministries, industrial partners, and organizations that early on wanted to see acceleration of method validation, a key bottleneck for the regulatory transition. We are now reaching out to more potential partners showcasing our success to attract further funding and potentially expanding our activities beyond the ED methods and to generally support NAM validation. If you and your organization are interested in supporting the Pepper mission, please reach out and we can have a discussion on this key topic.

New service offer: training in validation

Based on our increasing experience with method validation we also offer on-site and online courses in validation project leadership. We strongly believe that this is a new professional profession that requires specific experiences and skills, which we can transfer to others that enter this business area. Our first course was for Dr. Sophie Rigal from BfR in March with whom we now collaborate in specific projects. We are also able to teach or assist in the process following the laboratory work of validation, regarding submissions and reviews under OECD. We are experienced with Validation report writing and submission, the peer review process, the follow up on this, and the test guideline drafting and review. This is also an area where we can offer to assist and teach based on these experiences.

A look toward 2026

New methods

Pepper is gearing up to initiate validation of new methods that were on the top our new priority list following the annual meeting of the Relevance Committee in November. One will be initiated immediately and one later on when Andrea is back in action. We are also expecting to finish a couple of projects in 2026, write a validation report for each and submit for review under OECD. This should hopefully also lead to writing and submission of two more scientific articles covering these projects.

Future event

For Pepper the next ESTIV (European Society of Toxicology In Vitro) congress (29 June- 2 July 2026, Maastricht) will be of key importance. This meeting is in Maastricht (NL) and is called: Ensuring Safety, Advancing Science: Bridging to the Future with NAMs. This aligns perfectly with the mission of Pepper to accelerate validation of NAMs in the ED space and with the scope of NAMWISE we are participating in. This will also be the best option to interact with many of our collaborators and friends from around Europe. If you are at the ESTIV meeting in June/July please reach out to us for a meeting over coffee or seek us at our booth. We will update more on this during the spring on LinkedIn and at our homepage.

NAMWISE updates

This year was marked by the first in motion actions of the NAMWISE project Pepper is part of.  Pepper contributes to NAMWISE by leveraging its expertise in the validation of bioassays relevant to regulatory frameworks. As a public-private platform, Pepper helps bridge the gap between academic innovation and regulatory needs by selecting promising methods, ensuring reproducibility and transferability, and supporting their transition into internationally recognized guidelines such as those of the OECD.

To learn more about the project you can visit the website: www.namwise.eu

You can also discover how NAMWISE mapped and analysed training resources on New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) across Europe: identifying key initiatives, audiences, and gaps to strengthen future education and capacity building >> here

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