Enhancing chemical assessment with shared ontologies and semantic matching; an example from epigenetic research

Epigenetic data may be important for hazard identification during chemical risk assessment by providing mechanistic weight of evidence for chemical effects on life-stage disease susceptibility correlated with adverse health outcomes. Confidently describing those adverse outcome pathway linkages poses a challenge because data are frequently discordant, correlative, and use terms that inconsistently describe broad categories of experimental data and methodology. A solution to this challenge is semantic ontology concept matching that may facilitate systematic methods for assessing health risks, and permit data-driven AOPs, both of which will improve accuracy of a chemical assessment.

Impact/Purpose

The purpose of this work is to promote advancements in the field of epigenetics by demonstrating how information can be organized using semantics, ontologies, and an AOP framework to organize evidence during chemical assessment. This work will spark thoughts during a workshop and follow-up with break out sessions where participants will consider how epigenetic regulation, ontologies, and adverse outcome pathways can advance risk assessment beyond science and decisions.

Citation

Angrish, M. Enhancing chemical assessment with shared ontologies and semantic matching; an example from epigenetic research. Environmental Epigenetics - From Mechanisms to Regulation, Orebro, SWEDEN, February 21 - 22, 2019.