On August 23 and 24, Natura will participate in the 2nd edition of the Pan American Conference on Alternative Methods. The event aims to identify and promote the development of new alternatives that replace animal testing with a focus on scientific collaboration, uniting South America, Central America, and North America.
Since 2006, Natura has not conducted tests on ingredients or final products on animals, without compromising on stringent safety and efficacy criteria for its products. Since then, the company has developed more than 67 alternative methodologies to assess the safety of its products, in partnership with Brazilian and international universities and research institutes.
Among the innovations achieved during this period, the use of in silico tools (software capable of predicting the hazard of an ingredient based on its molecular structure) and new large-scale gene evaluation techniques (OMICS), utilizing computational biology, stand out, allowing for the identification of the potential of ingredients. This means that, through the genetic mapping of a specific asset from Brazilian biodiversity, such as murumuru or patauá, it is possible to determine the moisturizing or anti-aging potential of that ingredient, contributing to accelerate research and validate the efficacy of the assets used by the company, as explained by researcher Daniela Zimbardi.
In addition to Natura, the event is organized by Johns Hopkins (CAAT – USA), the Canadian Centre for Alternative Methods, and Inmetro (Brazil). This is the second edition of the event. The first took place in 2016 in Baltimore, United States.
“Hosting this event in Brazil demonstrates the relevance that the country has today on this topic, as this is the main event of the year to discuss alternative methods in research and education. Natura is immensely proud to be at the forefront of the research and innovations necessary to eliminate animal testing across the cosmetics industry,” says Vanessa Rocha, the company’s scientific manager, who will moderate a debate on the future of alternative testing with various companies in the sector.
