Philippe Vanparys, PhD

MANAGING DIRECTOR

Philippe Vanparys graduated as biologist at the University of Ghent (Belgium) and joined in 1978 the Janssen Research Foundation in Beerse (Belgium). He established the genetic toxicology unit and became head of this department. In 1979, he organised the switch of his department from non-GLP to GLP compliance and has 27 years of experience in conducting studies according to the GLP regulations. He gained his PhD in Science in 1988 at the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium). In 1990, he established an in vitro
toxicology laboratory with focus on the development of alternative methods to replace and reduce laboratory animals in toxicology testing. He was appointed in 1991 Director of Genetic and In vitro Toxicology. Besides responsibilities in regulatory toxicology and alternative toxicology testing, he also established in silico and high throughput screens for primary screening of genetic toxicity for the Discovery research. With the introduction of a scientific ladder, he was appointed in 2000 as Senior Research Fellow and Head of the Genetic and In vitro Toxicology at Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceutical Research & Development in Beerse (Belgium). He was asked to established in 2005 a centre of Excellence on Mechanistic Toxicology and appointed as “EU Head Mechanistic Toxicology”. In April 2008, he joined CARDAM (VITO, Belgium) as Managing Director. He was elected President of the Belgian Environmental Mutagen Society (BEMS) in 1991, is involved in several ECVAM Taskforces, was member of the ICCVAM Ocular Expert Panel in 2005 and is founding member of INVITROM. In 2005, he and two of his collaborators received the first J&J 3Rs Award in Recognition of Advancing the 3Rs at J&J. He is author and co-author of more than 50 publications and several hundreds non-clinical study reports on genotoxicity testing and alternatives on animal testing.