Host: The Japanese Society of Toxicology
Name : The 47th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society of Toxicology
Date : 2020 -
The 21st century has seen remarkable advances in computational power and biotechnology. These tools are transforming the way we predict the potential of chemicals to adversely affect human health. The sequencing of the genome supported the development of methods for evaluating global gene expression in tissues or cells, providing an unprecedented opportunity to investigate the initial effects of toxicants on cellular processes. These methods can be used in medium-to-high throughput, resulting in large data sets, which can be used alone or with other big data sets to gain insight into the toxicity of chemicals that have not previously been tested in animal models. Because human-derived cells are used in these assays, the results may be more relevant for predicting toxicity in humans. We are developing a large data set of gene expression signatures on toxicants that is compatible with other large data sets developed for drugs and gene manipulations (LINCS) and can be used for discovering which chemicals have similar biological activity using a statistical process called connectivity mapping (CMAP). We have also compiled a large data set of all toxicology studies in the public domain (either published or submitted to regulatory agencies) that is searchable by chemical structure. These tools provide a basis for read-across from tested chemicals to untested ones. The big data set of toxicology information can be used to identify close structural analogs, and the gene expression data confirms that the analogs have similar biological activity.
