FY 2007 HHS Annual Plan

Strategic Goal 4
Enhance the Capacity and Productivity of the Nation's Health Science Research Enterprise

On this page:
Program 4a: Knowledge Base on Chemical Effects in Biological Systems National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Highlighted Programs:

4a. Knowledge Base on Chemical Effects in Biological Systems (NIH)

HHS recognizes the important role research plays in improving the Nation's health. As a result, many of the strategies that HHS has identified in achieving its other strategic goals incorporate a research base. This goal, therefore, focuses on creating the underlying knowledge and strategies that improve and maintain the research infrastructure that produces advances in health science.

HHS commitment to enhancing the capacity and productivity of the Nation's health science research enterprise is demonstrated, for example, by developing the knowledge base on Chemical Effects in Biological Systems (CEBS). Investment in this research will provide important information for identifying toxic substances in the environment, and help to treat people at the greatest risk of diseases caused by environmental pollutants or toxicants.

Approximately four HHS programs in three OPDIVs contribute toward achieving this strategic goal. One program is highlighted in this strategic goal.

HHS places a high priority on improving the coordination, communication, and application of health research results. Strategies to meet this goal include:

• Provide for easy access by academia and industry to HHS databases and findings from HHS research, with appropriate privacy and confidentiality protection.
• Expand the use of electronic technology and media channels to gather and transfer research information to researchers, practitioners, and the public.
• Establish quality standards for the dissemination and strategic application of consumer/communication research findings.
• Establish partnerships with health professional associations, industry groups, patient representatives, community groups, disability groups, and purchasers of care to more widely disseminate research findings.
• Support "implementation research" to determine how innovative, effective interventions can be implemented in actual settings and populations, including the means to reach diverse communities.
• Ensure that consumer research, demonstration, and evaluation results are communicated effectively across HHS agencies and to all decision makers.
• Support development of data-based quality of care and outcome measurement systems to track adoption of evidence-based practices.

Program 4a: Knowledge Base on Chemical Effects in Biological Systems
National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Performance Measure: By 2012, develop a knowledge base on chemical effects in biological systems using a systems toxicology or toxicogenomics approach.

A new scientific field, toxicogenomics, is evolving to examine how chemical exposures disrupt biological processes at the molecular level. Toxicogenomics involves the collection, interpretation, and storage of information about gene and protein activity in order to identify toxic substances in the environment, and to help treat people at the greatest risk of diseases caused by environmental pollutants or toxicants. Because the pattern of regulation of various genes is different for different chemicals, scientists hope that these characteristic "signatures" will be useful in classifying exposure to these chemicals and other stressors by its biological activity. This information will provide a means of potentially predicting effects on human health from chemicals about which little is known. To enable this predictive capability, NIH is establishing a knowledge base on Chemical Effects in Biological Systems (CEBS), which will contain data on global gene expression, protein expression, metabolite profiles, and associated chemical/stressor-induced effects in multiple species.

CEBS will build the capacity for public electronic sharing of toxicogenomics data and information, making this data fully searchable and downloadable. Also, it will include traditional toxicology/ pathology data. This capability provides a way to use these very different types of data to estimate animal toxicity as well as to determine safe exposure levels in people. The information generated by CEBS can be used by research scientists, regulatory agencies like EPA and FDA, pharmaceutical companies, and the chemical industry. In order to insure maximum utility for these disparate potential users, CEBS is fully compliant with existing standards for microarray datasets as well as standards for the regulatory submission (FDA) of non-clinical (animal toxicology) data using the SEND format. This format enables pharmaceutical firms to transmit toxicology data to the FDA from their toxicology databases with a minimum of modifications.

In FY 2007 CEBS will seek to enhance electronic sharing of 'omics (suffix refers to the study of a system of biomolecules, e.g. proteomics, transcriptomics) and biology endpoint data. The success of this measure will allow the ability to explore/align relevant portions of disparate experimental datasets based on response. Various data sets are being integrated and an interface built to upload metabonomics data. The first step will be to integrate molecular expression with histopahologic outcomes (including images) for animal subjects exposed to chemicals/stressors. Then, standard anatomy and pathology onotologies will be incorporated. An image server will be built to enable an indexed query capability of pathology phenotype. The system will enable retrieval and cross domain (omics and toxicology/pathoplogy) computational evaluation of multiple studies of chemical stressors. If successful, scientists will have the capability to explore and align experimental datasets based on response (e.g., critical dose range). This component progresses towards developing a system that can provide a means of potentially predicting the effects on human health from chemicals.

In FY 2005, versions 1.5 and 1.6 of CEBS were made available to the public on the CEBS website (http://cebs.niehs.nih.gov). This program provides simple query download capability of global molecular expression and toxicology/pathology data on a select number of studies of environmental chemicals and drugs. Version 2.0 of CEBS is now being developed. This version of CEBS will capture much more detail of individual studies, e.g., type of diet, room temperatures, light/dark cycle, as well as housing many more study results. Currently, staff is defining the content and functionality of each page needed for this more robust toxicogenomics database.

The 2003 and 2004 annual targets for this goal were also met. In 2003, CEBS launched a pilot prototype database project to test the design and implementation of the database components and system architecture. In 2004, CEBS created the capability to import, export, and link molecular expression data by extending the CEBS database object model to include toxicology/pathology fields and by creating a data portal that will load toxicology data.

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