DRUG DISCOVERY TODAY DISEASE MODELS Editorial to ``Use of non-human primate disease models” Theo Vermeire 1, * ,y , Romina Aron Badin 2 , Jan Langermans 3 , Mark J. Prescott 4 1 National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, P.O. Box 1, 3720 BA Bilthoven, The Netherlands, The Netherlands. Email: theo.vermeire@rivm.nl 2 Atomic Energy Commission, France. Email: romina.aron-badin@cea.fr 3 Foundation Biomedical Primate Research Centre, The Netherlands. Email: langermans@bprc.nl 4 National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research (NC3Rs), UK. Email: mark.prescott@nc3rs.org.uk On March 14, 2017, a public hearing took place in Luxembourg on the draft Opinion of the EU Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks regarding the need of non- human primates (NHPs) in medical research, production and testing of products and devices. A short review of this Opinion can be read in this issue. The meeting focused on the 3Rs Drug Discovery Today: Disease Models Vol. 23, 2017 Editors-in-Chief Jan Tornell – AstraZeneca, Sweden Andrew McCulloch – University of California, SanDiego, USA Use of non-human primate disease models Theo Vermeire, PhD, is a registered toxicologist and currently working as senior scientist at the Centre for the safety of Substances and Products of the National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in the Netherlands (RIVM), where he has served in a good number of scientific and managerial positions. He studied biochemistry at the University of Utrecht and agricultural chemistry at the University of Wageningen and obtained a PhD in risk assessment from the University of Utrecht. His main interests are with the science-policy interface, regulatory risk assessment, alternatives for animal testing and development of risk assessment tools specifically for exposure assessment, uncertainty analysis and weight-of-evidence approaches in hazard and risk assessment. He has been involved in many advisory bodies and expert groups developing guidance and tools for risk assessment, e.g. for IPCS/ WHO, EU, OECD, EEA. Currently he is chair of the Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks (SCHEER), one of the non-food Scientific Committees of the European Commission. In this capacity he was also chair of the SCHEER Working Group on Non-Human Primates Testing. He is first author of 17 publications in peer reviewed journals and contributed to over 120 other scientific publications and reports. He co-edited, and contributed to, the standard risk assessment volume ‘‘Risk assessment of Chemicals, an Introduction’’. Romina Aron Badin, PhD joined the Molecular Imaging Research Center (MIRCen) in Paris in 2008 where she works as a senior researcher and head of the platforms of primate neurosurgery and behavior. She studied Human Genetics at the University of Leeds, followed by a Masters in Life Sciences at the University of Edinburgh and a PhD in Neuroscience at the University College of London. She worked at the Institute of Child Health in London as a post-doc until she joined MIRCen for a second post-doc in 2006. In 2008 she was recruited on a permanent position in the same institute where she develops translational research on neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s, Huntington’s and Alzheimer’s disease. She has >30 peer reviewed publications and has participated in collaborative research projects with academic laboratories in Europe and the US as well as worked with private companies like Oxford BioMedica, Sevier, and IPSEN. Her main research interest is the use of clinically relevant non-invasive imaging and behavioral techniques to evaluate the efficacy of new drug, gene, and cell therapies in pertinent NHP models in respect of the 3R principles. She is involved in various EU projects, including EUPRIM-Net, and a national initiative, GDR BioSimia, that federates French laboratories working with NHPs and aims to standardize procedures, communicate on new technologies, legislation, and advancements in NHP research. *Corresponding author. y The authors are members of the Working Group on Non-Human Primates Testing of the Scientific Committee on Health, Environmental and Emerging Risks (SCHEER), one of the non-food Scientific Committees of the European Commission, http://ec.europa.eu/health/scientific_committees/index_en.htm 1740-6757/$ © 2018 Published by Elsevier Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ddmod.2018.03.002 1