The Ferryman

A Shared Moment of Great Happiness

Barry Hardy and Spela Predan, Just Married.

 

Innovation in Predictive Toxicology (#OpenTox Munich meeting program)

The preliminary program with schedule for the #OpenTox InterAction Meeting in Munich in August has been loaded at:
Innovation in Predictive Toxicology
9-12 August, Munich, Germany
http://www.opentox.org/meet/opentox2011/opentox2011

Abstracts for the poster session and awards are still being accepted through June at:
https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=opentox2011

There is no registration fee to attend the conference but places are limited to 100 attendees.
Please complete the registration application form while still available at:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/opentox2011

Innovation in Predictive Toxicology

We are holding an OpenTox InterAction Meeting, in Munich, Germany (10-12 August 2011 on Innovation in Predictive Toxicology.

Further information including a preliminary list of speakers and topics, and links to abstract submission and registration forms is located at:
http://www.opentox.org/meet/opentox2011

Abstract submissions should be completed by 30 April for consideration for the conference program and bursary awards. Poster abstracts will continue to be accepted through 30 June, to be eligible for meeting-based review and innovation merit awards.

Registration should be completed using the form located at
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/opentox2011

Registration involves no fee, but please note that places are limited to 100 participants, and we will have to close registration once our confirmed invitation and acceptance list is full.

A pre-conference OpenTox workshop on new developments in methods, REACH-relevant models and applications will be held 9 August.

The ToxBank Infrastructure Project

The ToxBank project was launched in January 2011. ToxBank establishes a dedicated web-based warehouse for toxicity data management and modelling, a "gold standards" compound database and repository of selected test compounds, and a reference resource for cells, cell lines and tissues of relevance for in vitro systemic toxicity research carried out across the FP7 HEALTH.2010.4.2.9 Alternative Testing Strategies SEURAT-1 program. The project develops infrastructure and service functions to create a sustainable predictive toxicology support resource going beyond the lifetime of the program.

 
ToxBank should provide a unique opportunity to create an interoperable linked resource infrastructure supporting many diverse scientific research activities in the development of alternative testing methods whose ultimate goal is to replace animal testing.  Developments on OpenTox should provide a strong foundation on interfaces, components, standards, and ontology that will enable and accelerate development of a modern infrastructure servicing the needs of many researchers including cell biologists, assay developers, omics technology developers, device engineers, molecular biologists, chemists, computational scientists and systems biologists.

The Seurat-1 research cluster that ToxBank is supporting had its Kick-Off meeting activities 1-3 March 2011 in Cascais, Portugal.  Seurat-1 is a public-private partnership inititative between the EU's FP7 program and Colipa. The cluster involves seven projects: SCR&TOX, HeMiBio, Detective, COSMOS, NOTOX, ToxBank (infrastructure) and COACH (coordination).

 

This project will be jointly funded by COLIPA and the EC. Any opinions expressed in this post are those of the author. COLIPA is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained therein

Collaborative development of predictive toxicology applications

The following initial paper on OpenTox has now been published and is available in preliminary form:

Collaborative development of predictive toxicology applications
Barry Hardy, Nicki Douglas, Christoph Helma, Micha Rautenberg, Nina Jeliazkova, Vedrin Jeliazkov, Ivelina Nikolova, Romualdo Benigni, Olga Tcheremenskaia, Stefan Kramer, Tobias Girschick, Fabian Buchwald, Joerg Wicker, Andreas Karwath, Martin Gutlein, Andreas Maunz, Haralambos Sarimveis, Georgia Melagraki, Antreas Afantitis, Pantelis Sopasakis, David Gallagher, Vladimir Poroikov, Dmitry Filimonov, Alexey Zakharov, Alexey Lagunin, Tatyana Gloriozova, Sergey Novikov, Natalia Skvortsova, Dmitry Druzhilovsky, Sunil Chawla, Indira Ghosh, Surajit Ray, Hitesh Patel and Sylvia Escher
Journal of Cheminformatics 2010, 2:7 (31 August 2010)
http://www.jcheminf.com/content/2/1/7

Please feel free to circulate in the community and to your contacts who might be interested. Thanks!

And a special thanks to all who have contributed to advancing this work, including our advisors, and growing community of friends, interactions and partners!

Barry 

OpenTox Presentation on Integrating Predictive Toxicology Resources & Applications

I have uploaded a copy of the OpenTox presentation from the workshop in Potsdam on May 30 on Integrating Predictive Toxicology Resources & Applications at:

http://www.opentox.org/home/documents/presentations/opentoxpresPotsdam30May2010/view

OpenTox Workshop in Potsdam to discuss collaborative approach to linking resources to improve human safety

On Sunday May 30 we host an OpenTox Workshop near Berlin in Potsdam that will bring many leading international research program directors and leaders together to discuss how collaboration and the increased linking of resources over the World Wide Web could progress human safety research and safety assessment.  By linking resources and data increasingly powerful computer-based models can be built for predicting and avoiding unwanted adverse toxic side effects of drugs, chemicals, ingredients in soaps and cosmetics, pesticides etc. thus enhancing human safety and protecting the environment better.  Such methods should also eventually lead to the replacement of many animal experiments.

More details on program can be located at:

http://www.opentox.org/data/blogentries/public/opentoxworkshoppotsdam2010

Developing new Predictive Toxicology Strategies

I have now posted the detailed program for the eCheminfo predictive toxicology and ADME workshop which take place in Oxford 2 - 6 August 2010 at
http://barryhardy.blogs.com/theferryman/2010/05/predictive-toxicology-echeminfo-2010-oxford-workshop-program.html

and you can also download a copy of the program from here as a pdf:

Download ECheminfoPredictiveToxBrochure-OX810-web1

During the workshop we will apply a variety of design, informatics and modelling methods to predictive toxicology problems guided by workshop leaders with expertise in the approaches used. A case study approach will additionally be followed so that groups can work together throughout the week on their case study problems. The case studies will also be developed virtually before the workshop week with support extended afterwards for further work including experimental testing of interesting results and hypotheses developed. The virtual aspects of the case study work will additionally be supported by the Synergy and OpenTox infrastructures and related Collaboration Pool and pilot collaboration study.

Case studies will focus on the development of innovative integrated testing strategies applied to the problem of predicting the toxicity of a molecule.  Such strategies are becoming an increasingly important part of drug design strategies so as to remove toxic liabilities as early as possible in the design processs. REACH legislation is also requiring organisations in coming years to carry out a more extensive safety testing of all chemical ingredients in a variety of products ranging from consumer products to food to agrochemicals. Related to this activity is the relatively unsatisfactory use of animal experiments to predict human toxicity, which are not only complex and expensive, but also often do not predict human effects well, if at all. 
Hence new approaches combining computational modelling, in vitro assays, systems biology, stem cell technology etc. are required.

We will apply techniques to the study of existing knowledge (e.g., from adverse events, biological literature, pathway models etc.) to help support mechanism-based hypotheses and strategies. Modelling techniques based on data-mining, database searching, and read-across will be applied to chemical categories. Integrated QSAR-based models supported by the new OpenTox infrastructure will be used to build properly validated models including estimation of applicability domain. We will also research ADME and kinetics properties of structures as relevant to their toxicity profiles. We will attempt to predict primary metabolities based on P450 metabolism simulation and model the potential toxicities of metabolites. Population-varied physiologically-based ADME Simulations will be carried out for in vitro-in vivo extrapolation, exposure estimation and to study the variation across individuals and populations.  We will also apply workflow techniques to the combination of methods and Bayesian networks to the evolution of weight of evidence based consensus predictions.

The most promising strategies and predictions developed will be used to design experimental human toxicity-oriented in vitro assays which will be run after the workshop as part of the virtual case study extension work.  Both computational and experimental work will be documented according to industry best practices in a collaborative electronic laboratory notebook.  We will attempt to develop new combined in silico - in vitro strategies superior to existing approaches which should help advance the field and industry testing and regulatory needs.

Through the time spent working and discussing together combined with the availability of a variety of leading software and expert support from workshop leaders, workshop participants should take home ideas and learning to help accelerate their own projects related to safety design and risk assessment. The location and atmosphere in Oxford is also an ideal background for networking, getting to know your peers and joining the ongoing eCheminfo community of practice activities. As is often common with eCheminfo gatherings the workshop usually attracts a variety of backgrounds including industry, academia and government research instititutes and from many different countries. We also welcome the participation of non-modelling specialists from different areas of chemistry, biology and toxicology to participate and bring an interdisciplinary interaction to the collaborative group work.

I hope you can join us!
Barry

InnovationWell Collaboration Pool Formation

We are establishing an InnovationWell Collaboration Pool of individuals and organisations who have an interest in collaborating together in areas of healthcare and life science innovation. For example, a selection of Pool members could participate in a collaborative life science, systems biology or predictive toxicology project, develop a funding proposal or response to a call opportunity together, or develop an innovation or best practice.

To join the InnovationWell Collaboration Pool please complete the short form located at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/782L9DZ

Collaborations will take a virtual organisation approach, i.e., partners can bring contributing knowledge, computational or experimental capabilities to a partnership for the duration of a project or other endeavour.

We will run two such virtual organisation (VO) projects for the first time this year starting later this Spring:
A) Drug Design project which will examine the application of a variety of leading modelling and design approaches to novel target kinases, to experimentally test predictions, and to initiate a best practices virtual screening resource.
B) Predictive Toxicology project to apply a combination of in silico and in vitro approaches to predict in vivo toxicity including exposure.

Both VOs will be supported by a variety of leading modelling and design software, informatics infrastructure, and collaborative content management and electronic lab notebook systems.

The VOs will be supported by knowledge-oriented collaboration services developed under the FP7 Synergy research project, including a reactive complex event driven engine, collaboration moderator, collaboration pattern services and partner knowledge base.

The Predictive Toxicology VO will be supported by distributed REST-driven web services for data management, model building, validation and reporting, developed under the OpenTox Framework (http://www.opentox.org/)

We will also consider incorporation of Case Studies into the eCheminfo Drug Discovery and Predictive ADME/Tox workshops to be held in Oxford this summer. See http://echeminfo.com/

Barry Hardy PhD
InnovationWell 

Douglas Connect
Switzerland

Satisfying REACH Requirements in Predictive Toxicology

The OpenTox workshop on "Satisfying REACH Requirements in Predictive Toxicology" to be held at the ISS in Rome 10-11 September 2009. 

Participants at the workshop will involve cross-industry users and regulatory experts in addition to solution developers and providers who will discuss the requirements and use cases of users in chemical toxicology evaluation and risk assessment, and including satisfaction of current and future requirements of the REACH legislation using alternative testing methods. The workshop format involves short presentations to provide user, regulatory and solution needs perspectives, followed by knowledge cafe discussions discussing use cases, challenges, issues, solutions, collaboration opportunities and ways forward in small groups.

PROGRAM

Thursday 10 September

08.30 Welcome Coffee

09.00 Introduction & Workshop Overview, Barry Hardy (OpenTox and Douglas Connect, Switzerland)

09.15 The Use of Computational Methods for the in silico  Prediction of Chemical Properties in REACH, Andrew P Worth (Systems Toxicology Unit, Institute for Health and Consumer Protection, European Commission -Joint Research Centre, Italy)

09.40 Automated Workflows for Hazard Assessment, Elena Fioravanzo (S-IN Soluzioni Informatiche, Italy)

10.05 OpenTox Predictive Toxicology Use Cases, Barry Hardy (OpenTox and Douglas Connect, Switzerland)

10.30 Coffee Break

11.00 Knowledge Café Discussions

12.30 Group Discussion

13.00 Lunch

14.00 Opportunities for using  Systems Biology Data for in silico  Modeling of Personalized Medicine, Richard D. Beger  (Division of Systems Toxicology, National Center for Toxicological Research, Food and Drug Administration, USA)

14.25 A Framework for Using Structural, Reactivity, Metabolic and Physicochemical Similarity to Evaluate the Suitability of Analogs for SAR-based Toxicological Assessments, Joanna Jaworska (Procter & Gamble, Modeling & Simulation, Biological Systems, Brussels Innovation Center, Belgium)

 14.50 Integration of Integrated Assessment Tools for Environmental Risk Assessment, Willie Peijnenburg (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, The Netherlands)

15.15 Prediction of Animal Toxicity Endpoints for ToxCAST Phase I Compounds using a Combination of Chemical and Biological in vitro Descriptors, Alex Tropsha (Carolina Center for Computational Toxicology and Carolina Environmental Bioinformatics Research Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA)

15.40 Coffee Break

16.00 Knowledge Café Discussions

17.30 Group Discussion

18.00 Close

 

Friday 11 September

08.30 Welcome Coffee

09.00 Predictive Toxicology for Cosmetics - An Industry Perspective, Stephanie Ringeissen (Safety Research Department, L’Oréal R&D, France)

09.25 OECD (Q)SAR Application Toolbox: Progress and Ongoing Developments, (OECD, Paris, France)

09.50 Italian Specialty Chemical Industry Perspective on Predictive Toxicology, Maurizio Colombo (Health & Safety Evaluation, Industrial Regulation Management, Lamberti S.p.A., Italy)

10.15 Coffee Break

10.45 Knowledge Café Discussions

12.00 Group Discussion

12.30 Lunch

13.30 The Italian Chemical Industry and the REACH impact on SMEs, Antonio Conto (Chemsafe Srl, Italy)

13.55 Classification- and Regression-Based QSAR of Chemical Toxicity on the Basis of Structural and Physicochemical Similarity, Oleg Raevsky (Department of Computer-Aided Molecular Design, Institute of Physiologically Active Compounds of Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia)

14.20 Analysis of Toxcast Data and in vitro / in vivo Endpoint Relationships, Romualdo Benigni (Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Italy)

14.45 Coffee Break

15.15 Knowledge Café Discussions

16.30 Group Discussion

17.00 Close

More Information including Abstracts:

http://www.opentox.org/data/blogentries/public/opentoxworkshoprome09