Recently, RECETOX interviewed one of the ONTOX postdoctoral researchers, Dr. Eliška Kuchovská. Find out more about her career path and future plans in the RECETOX interview.
Eliška graduated with a double PhD degree from the University of Bordeaux (France) and Masaryk University (Czech Republic) in environmental health sciences focusing on developmental toxicity. She even received the Masaryk University Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Doctoral Studies.
She wanted to continue working in environmental toxicology outside the Czech Republic. Therefore, her research path had led her to become the Postdoctoral researcher in the working group of Alternative method development for environmental toxicity testing at the IUF – Leibniz Research Institute for Environmental Medicine in Düsseldorf, Germany. Here she works in the team of Prof. Ellen Fritsche on the cognitive brain disorders research with the excellent neurodevelopmental toxicologists.
“The development of the human brain is fascinating and trying to figure out which chemicals affect its development was a dream for me. I’m very grateful to be part of Professor Ellen Fritsche’s team. She is one of the few top scientists in developmental neurotoxicology and has been in the field practically since its very beginning,” Eliška explains why she wanted to work at IUF.
Path to ONTOX
As Eliška is motivated by the desire to help improve the environment and human health, she joined ONTOX on behalf of IUF in May 2021. She is the deputy of Prof. Fritsche in Work Package 9, responsible for ONTOX tasks related to developmental toxicity in the brain. Eliška will help set up and characterize the developmental neurotoxicity in vitro assays and will carry out subsequent targeted testing of chemicals whose prenatal exposure might lead to cognitive function defects in children.
“I am happy that European research is turning its back on animal testing, which is unethical and often doesn’t even make scientific sense – humans are simply not 80-kilo mice.”
ONTOX aims to provide the functional and sustainable solution for advancing human risk assessment of chemicals without the use of animals in line with the principles of 21st-century toxicity testing and next-generation risk assessment. ONTOX also collaborates with RISK-HUNT3R, and PrecisionTox, another H2020 project in the ASPIS cluster representing Europe’s effort towards widespread adoption and use of new alternative non-animal methods for assessing the risks of chemicals on human health.
“I am happy that European research is turning its back on animal testing, which is unethical and often doesn’t even make scientific sense – humans are simply not 80-kilo mice,” Eliška remarks on this advanced approach.
Future plans
Eliška would like to lead her own research group in the field of developmental neurotoxicology. However, she will be happy to work on any project in toxicology that is useful for society, whether it is related to human health or the environment!
Read the full interview at the RECETOX website.