Dr. Mark Martens is a senior toxicologist with more than 40 years of experience in toxicology, risk assessment and preclinical development of chemicals, agrochemicals and pharmaceuticals.
Mark supports ToxMinds as an independent expert consultant on any questions related to general and mechanistic toxicology. Having been responsible for the design, conduct and monitoring of all type of toxicology studies, he has invaluable in vivo expertise for the evaluation of acute and repeated dose toxicity including genotoxicity, carcinogenicity, DART and endocrine disruption.
Following his Ph.D. in pharmacy and first positions as assistant professor for toxicology in academia and in the pharmaceutical industry, Mark worked in various functions for the Belgium Health authorities from 1979-1989. One of his achievements was the foundation of the Belgian National Institute of Public Health’s Department of Toxicology which he also led for 5 years. He then joined Monsanto in various functions initially as Toxicology Manager Europe/Africa in Brussels, Head of Corporate Toxicology at the Monsanto World Headquarters in St Louis, MO, USA and then as Toxicology Director, Europe/Africa. In 2004, he joined Tibotec, the Infectious Diseases Therapeutic Area of Johnson & Johnson, as Senior Toxicology Director and from 2005 until 2010 as Vice President Europe for preclinical development. He has been president of the Belgium Society of Toxicology from 2004 to 2014. Since 2010, Mark serves as an independent consultant for preclinical development and toxicology.
Dr. Larry Segal is a senior toxicologist with 30 years of toxicology experience gained in various functions in academia, public authorities as well as in the pharmaceutical and chemical industry.
Larry supports ToxMinds as an independent toxicology consultant specifically in the context of projects with the pharmaceutical, consumer product and chemical industry. Specifically with regard to the pharmaceutical sector, his experience and expertise in assessing and determining permissible daily exposure levels (PDE) for process impurities, residual actives and extractables & leachables is a great asset to our service offer in this area. Given his substantial in vivo testing experience, Larry also supports our team in the management of toxicology testing programmes with regard to repeated dose toxicity and DART endpoints.
Larry was a senior toxicologist within the Product Safety Bureau of Health Canada from 1990 until 2000. He then moved to industry where he served as senior toxicologist and regulatory specialist first at Huntsman Europe and then with GE Advanced Materials in Belgium. In 2006, he joined GSK Vaccines as Director of Nonclinical Toxicology and Pharmacology. From 2015, Larry served as senior toxicology consultant first for Penman Consulting BVBA and then independently from 2017 onwards.
Dr. Elsa Antunes Fernandes Gáspár and Dr. Karin van Ede have extensive experience in the fields of toxicological risk assessment and endocrine disruption. Specifically with regard to the latter, Elsa and Karin have project-based experience in assessing biological plausibility and modes of actions (MoA) for endocrine-mediated adversity.
ToxMinds partnered with KeyToxicology in 2017 to increase our toxicological hazard and risk assessment capacities as well as to add further mechanistical expertise in the field of endocrine disruption to our team. Elsa and Karin are also an integral part of our team which works on biotechnology products, focused mainly on the screening, assessing and summarising published literature on the human health and environmental safety of genetically modified crops.
Elsa and Karin received their Ph.D. in Toxicology at the Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences of the University of Utrecht in 2011 and 2014 respectively. Elsa’ research focused on the neuro-endocrine effects of non-dioxine like polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), whereas Karin’s research focused on the uncertainties in the risk assessment of dioxin-like compounds.