Greetings
26^th Annual Meeting of JSAAE will be held from December 19 (Thu) to 21(Sat) in Kyoto Terrsa on the theme "New Developments in basic science and of Alternatives to Animal Experiments". JSAAE is a member of the academic research community cooperation in the Science Council of Japan, which is composed of researchers from governments, universities and public companies. This Society is aimed at the promotion and popularization of the 3Rs: Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement, are important from a legal, ethical and scientific standpoint, which is also the international standards and guidelines. According to this purpose, research, development, education, investigation is being implemented.
The Society was able to get highly evaluated by the international community the successful holding of the World Congress 6 in collaboration with the Science Council of Japan in Tokyo in 2008. In addition, participants of 400 to 500 persons come together in the Annual Meeting of every year, new research findings have been produced. In addition, JaCVAM (Japanese Center for the Validation of Alternative Methods) is the 3Rs in animal experiments for the evaluation of chemical substance safety in Japan and establish guidelines for new alternative experimental methods through international collaboration with this Society. Alternatives to animal experiments has been noted in cosmetics in the past. Recently, research and development of alternatives to animal experiments will be required for the safety assessment of all drugs and medical devices. For this reason, many test methods will have been proposed in the new international organization of OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development), ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and ICH (The International Conference on Harmonisation of Technical Requirements for Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use). To promote the development and validation of alternatives to animal experiments, ECVAM was established in Europe. For cosmetics, many of the animal experiments has been already prohibited. In addition, ICCVAM (The Interagency Coordinating Committee on the Validation of Alternative Methods) was established in the United States. Further, it has been successfully activated by NICEATM (The National Toxicology Program (NTP) Interagency Center for the Evaluation of Alternative Toxicological Methods) to evaluate the alternatives to animal experiments. In addition, REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals) is the European Community Regulation on chemicals and their safe use. In this REACH law, development of alternatives to animal experiments have been required. However, it is not progressing at a rate enough to develop a safety evaluation. This time, I decided to annual meeting of JSAAE can be held in this manner. I hope that the participation of so many people in this annual meeting and it will be excited and fruitful. I am very much looking forward to seeing you soon in Kyoto!!
Thank you very much for your cooperation.

Chairman of 26^th Annual Meeting of JSAAE

Koichi IMAI, D.D.S., Ph.D