Dr. Shalenie den Braver-Sewradj is a toxicologist and senior advisor for the Netherlands National Committee for the protection of animals used for scientific purposes (NCad). The NCad is an independent body that advices the Dutch government on the protection of laboratory animals and the transition to a society without animal experiments. Dr. den Braver-Sewradj has worked across the full chain of science to policy. Her PhD dissertation on the development of new predictive methods for drug-induced liver injury was awarded with the prize for the best Dutch toxicology thesis. She then moved into regulatory risk assessment of chemicals and later coordinated complex science-policy projects on chemical health risks.

At the NCad she is involved in the development and follow-up of the NCad transition policy advice ‘From niche to norm’ (2026). The central message of the policy advice: strengthening innovation alone will not shift a system that keeps defaulting to the animal model. New methods advance quickly in individual projects and consortia, while assessment routines and infrastructure adapt far more slowly.  The advice sets out five interdependent pillars: governance and ownership, updating the ethical framework, innovation and chain policy, a coordinated international strategy, and monitoring to show whether the system is genuinely changing.