Thomas Hartung, MD, PhD, steers the revolution in toxicology to move away from 50+ year-old animal tests to organoid cultures and the use of artificial intelligence.
The main goal of Dr. Hartung’s work is to move toward a paradigm shift in toxicity testing to improve public health. Because of his past role as head of the European Center for the Validation of Alternative Methods of the European Commission (2002-2008), Dr. Hartung has long been involved in the implementation of the 2007 NRC vision document “ Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century – a vision and a strategy.”
More recently, he has served as Field Chief editor for Frontiers in AI, the machine learning-focused journal by open-access publisher, Frontiers in Science.
For many years now Dr. Hartung championed the use of computational tools within toxicology as an alternative to animal models. He has furthered the translation of concepts of evidence-based medicine to toxicology (evidence-based toxicology). This aims for systematic assessment of the quality of all tools for regulatory toxicology and the development of new approaches based on annotated pathways of toxicity (the Human Toxome).
Dr. Hartung has a broad background in clinical and experimental pharmacology and toxicology documented in more than 760 publications, (h-index 129 with 56,000+ citations). Previous work centered on the immune recognition of bacteria, including pyrogen testing, and the induced inflammatory response. In experimental and clinical approaches, the pharmacological modulation of these responses was studied.
Dr. Hartung relocated to the US in early 2009 to lead the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing (CAAT) and a laboratory for developmental neurotoxicity research based on genomics and metabolomics. Recent advances use big data and artificial intelligence for predictive toxicology, Green Toxicology as part of Green Chemistry, and the envisaged Human Exposome. He sees exposomics as a critical partner to in vitro toxicity testing.
Fun Fact: Dr. Hartung was a standup comedian for many years. This is actually how he funded his graduate studies – and he learned much of what he knows about public speaking from this experience.