One of the objectives of ACEnano is to communicate the aims, results and outputs of the project to a wide range of stakeholders and maximise synergies and collaborations with ongoing EU and international activities related to nanomaterials characterisation, nanomaterials safety, risk assessment, etc.
Nanomaterials are very diverse groups of materials with greatly varying properties. Nowadays, an increasing number of them are entering the market in every day products spanning from healthcare and leisure to electronics, cosmetics and foodstuff. However, the novelty and variety in properties and forms of nanomaterials makes the elaboration of a well-founded and robust legislative framework to ensure safe development of nano-enabled products particularly challenging.
At the heart of the challenge lies the difficulty in the reliable and reproducible characterisation of nanomaterials given their extreme diversity and dynamic nature, particularly in complex conditions, such as within different biological, environmental and technological compartments.
To resolve this, ACEnano project will bring together an impressive and substantial partnership of 26 experts from research and industry who will work together during the next four years to introduce confidence, adaptability and clarity into nanomaterial risk assessment by developing a widely implementable and robust tiered approach to nanomaterial physicochemical characterisation that will simplify and facilitate contextual (hazard or exposure) description and its transcription into a reliable nanomaterials grouping framework.
The npSCOPE project aims at developing a new integrated instrument (the nanoparticle-scope) optimised for providing a complete physico-chemical characterisation of nanoparticles both in their pristine form or embedded in complex matrices such as biological tissues. Using sophisticated correlative data processing methodologies and algorithms based on statistical methods in conjunction with appropriate visualisation methods of the results, the npSCOPE instrument will allow rapid, accurate and reproducible measurements.
Jointly organized by five major FP7 projects (NANOSOLUTIONS, SUN, NanoMILE, GUIDEnano, and eNanoMapper), the conference aimed to present the main results achieved in the course of the projects fostering a discussion about their impact in the nanosafety field and possibilities for future research programmes.
The EU-funded project ACEnano officially started in 23rd January during the kick-off meeting kindly hosted by the project coordinator, University of Birmingham.
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