News: October 2018

AOP NEWS

AOP NEWS – October 2018

  • AOP Training:
    • A for-credit graduate-level summer course on AOP development was offered to students from the University of Ottawa, Carleton University, University of Alberta and University of Laval as part of the NSERC CREATE-REACT program (www.create-react.uottawa.ca). This was the second year that this course has been offered, with plans to offer it again in the summer of 2019. .  Contact: Jason Obrien <jason.obrien@canada.ca>
    • There was a recent AOP Training Session in the Continuing Education afternoon of the 2nd Asian Congress on Alternatives meeting in Guangzhou, China on October 9, 2018, which was organised and sponsored by the Humane Society The session was attended by ca. 50 mostly Chinese students and young scientists. Kate Willett from the Humane Society gave an introduction to the AOP concept, while Clemens Wittwehr from the European Commission's JRC showed the AOP Wiki and how AOP knowledge can be searched and entered there. It became clear that training efforts to Chinese stakeholders can only be meaningfully stepped up through a local group of "AOP ambassadors". Measures need to be discussed to create such a group and support it in their local training activities.
    • A training session on creating quantitative AOPs with Effectopedia was held as a at Eurotox 2018 in Brussels. . Training materials can be found at https://www.effectopedia.org/eurotox2018/
    • Training and practice sessions for quantitative AOPs will be presented at the School of Environmental Engineering, University of Seoul18-23 Nov 2018. cContact: Hristo Aladjov <hristo.aladjov@effectopedia.org>
  • New Tool Development:
    • There is a new tool in development that will compile lists of chemical stressors associated with AOPs in the AOP-KB. The tool is being developed as macro-enabled spreadsheets that uses the AOP Event ontology to search (what) for chemicals that likely to activate an AOP.Webinars for this tool are anticipated in late 2018 or early 2019. Contact: Nancy Baker Baker.nancy@epa.gov
    • A new tool, Bayesian Inference for Substance and Chemical Toxicity (BISCT) has been released. It contains a simple user interface for predicting impact of chemicals on steatosis and steroidogenesis AOP networks using active or inactive calls for MIE or KE from in vitro assay measurements.The tool can be downloaded from: https://github.com/DataSciBurgoon/bisct .   Contact: Lyle.L.Burgoon@usace.army.mil
  • AOP Handbook Team:  The AOP Handbook team has been actively reviewing the current status of AOP development and is building ideas for future revisions.   These include trying to solve the ongoing lack of interest in developing new AOP due to the large time commitment, ownership issues, and problems with partial AOPs that are never developed further.  They are suggesting changes to the review process, KE sharing, using the KER as the “pragmatic” unit of reporting, and holding future workshops on major KEs such as oxidative stress.  A report out on activities is planned for the December EAGMST conference call. Contact:  Magda Sachana Magdalini.SACHANA@oecd.org  
  • Call For Proposals:The JRC has released a call for proposals for a study entitled “Retrospective and Prospective Analysis of the AOP Framework - Spotlight on the AOP knowledge users”.  The purpose of this study is to retrospectively and prospectively analyse the AOP Framework's past, present and future in terms of its suitability to achieve the ultimate goal of better regulatory decisions. The study will also deliver actionable suggestions to increase the uptake of the AOP Framework in the relevant stakeholder communities, which will be shared and subsequently co-executed with the AOP Framework governance bodies at OECD and other organisations. More information can be found at:  https://web.jrc.ec.europa.eu/callsfortender/index.cfm?action=app.tender&id=7395&home=1
  • New AOPs endorsed by OECD:  Three new AOPs have just been published on the OECD Series on Adverse Outcome Pathways, following Joint Meeting declassification.
    • Adverse Outcome Pathway on Inhibition of the mitochondrial complex I of nigro-striatal neurons leading to parkinsonian motor deficits (DOI:https://doi.org/10.1787/b46c3c00-en)
    • Adverse Outcome Pathway on chronic binding of antagonist to N-methyl-D-aspartate receptors during brain development leading to neurodegeneration with impairment in learning and memory in aging (DOI:https://doi.org/10.1787/95f569ad-en)
    • Adverse Outcome Pathway on Androgen receptor agonism leading to reproductive dysfunction (in repeat-spawning fish) (DOI:https://doi.org/10.1787/b0c6838a-en)
  • Recent Papers:
    • Perkins EJ, Gayen K, Shoemaker JE, Antczak P, Burgoon L, Falciani F, Gutsell S, Hodges G, Kienzler A, Knapen D, McBride M, Willett C, Doyle FJ, Garcia-Reyero N.Chemical hazard prediction and hypothesis testing using quantitative adverse outcome pathways. ALTEX. 2018 Oct 16. doi: 10.14573/altex.1808241. [Epub ahead of print]
    • Goodchild CG, Simpson AM, Minghetti M, DuRant SE.Bioenergetics-Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP): linking organismal and suborganismal energetic endpoints to adverse outcomes.Environ Toxicol Chem. 2018doi: 10.1002/etc.4280. [Epub ahead of print]
    • Carusi, A., M.R. Davies, G. De Grandis, B.I. Escher, G. Hodges, K.M..Y Leung, M.

Whelan, C. Willett and G.T. Ankley. 2018. Harvesting the promise of AOPs: An assessment and recommendations. Sci. Total Environ. 628-629:1542-1556.

  • Knapen D, Angrish MM, Fortin MC, Katsiadaki I, Leonard M, Margiotta-Casaluci L, Munn S, O'Brien JM, Pollesch N, Smith LC, Zhang X, Villeneuve DL. Adverse outcome pathway networks I: Development and applications. Environ Toxicol Chem. 2018 37(6):1723-1733.
  • Villeneuve DL, Angrish MM, Fortin MC, Katsiadaki I, Leonard M, Margiotta-Casaluci L, Munn S, O'Brien JM, Pollesch NL, Smith LC, Zhang X, Knapen D. Adverse outcome pathway networks II: Network analytics. Environ Toxicol Chem. 2018 37(6):1734-1748.
  • Oki NO, Farcal L, Abdelaziz A, Florean O, Doktorova TY, Exner T, Kohonen P, Grafström R, Hardy B.Integrated analysis of in vitro data and the adverse outcome pathway framework for prioritization and regulatory applications: An exploratory case study using publicly available data on piperonyl butoxide and liver models.Toxicol In Vitro. 2018 Sep 7;54:23-32. doi: 10.1016/j.tiv.2018.09.002. [Epub ahead of print]
  • Fay KA, Villeneuve DL, Swintek J, Edwards SW, Nelms MD, Blackwell BR, Ankley GT.Differentiating pathway-specific from nonspecific effects in high-throughput toxicity data: A foundation for prioritizing adverse outcome pathway development.Toxicol Sci. 2018 163(2):500-515.
  • Kimber I, Poole A, Basketter DA.Skin and respiratory chemical allergy: confluence and divergence in a hybrid adverse outcome pathway.Toxicol Res (Camb). 2018 7(4):586-605.
  • Stinckens E, Vergauwen L, Ankley GT, Blust R, Darras VM, Villeneuve DL, Witters H, Volz DC, Knapen D.An AOP-based alternative testing strategy to predict the impact of thyroid hormone disruption on swim bladder inflation in zebrafish. Aquat Toxicol. 2018 200:1-12.
  • Pittman, M.E., Edwards, S.W., Ives, C., Mortensen, H.M. (2018) AOP-DB: A database resource for the exploration of Adverse Outcome Pathways through integrated association networks. Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology 343:71-83.
  • Mortensen, H.M., Chamberlin, J., Joubert, B., Angrish, M, Sipes, N., Lee, J.S., Euling, S.Y. (2018) Leveraging human genetic and adverse outcome pathway (AOP) data to inform susceptibility in human health risk assessment. Mammalian Genome. Special Issue: Genetics and Environment. 29(1-2):190-204.