The 12th World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences (WC12), scheduled from August 27-31, 2023, in Niagara Falls, Canada, brings together global scientists to discuss advancements in alternatives to animal testing within life sciences. At this significant international event, Drs. Vijay Gombar and Ruchir Shah will showcase Sciome’s innovative collaboration with the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) to develop OrbiTox—a state-of-the-art interactive tool designed for predictive toxicology and translational discovery.
With the scientific community moving away from traditional animal testing, there is an increasing reliance on New Approach Methodologies (NAMs), such as in vitro assays and in silico methods. These new methods generate vast amounts of complex data, which often pose challenges in efficient interpretation and utilization. OrbiTox addresses these challenges by providing dynamic and interactive visualization capabilities, allowing users to effectively analyze and interpret “big data” across diverse domains such as chemicals, genes, biological pathways, and test organisms.
OrbiTox currently integrates curated data on 900,000 substances, 22,000 annotated human targets, 1,500 biological pathways, and over 100 test organisms. It also encompasses more than 400,000 expert-curated connections related to human and rodent carcinogenicity, bacterial mutagenicity, acute toxicity, and various bioactivities. Additionally, OrbiTox features over 100 novel QSAR models that deliver chemistry-based reasoning for predictions in 80 Tox21 assays, bacterial mutagenicity tests recommended by OECD, and assessments of cardio and ocular toxicity.
The uniquely intuitive 3D organization of high-dimensional data, represented by interconnected concentric 3D globes, allows seamless queries across multiple data domains. For example, users can explore experimental and predicted chemical profiles and identify structural analogues utilizing Sciome’s advanced Saagar substructures (PMID:33356152). In one illustrative use-case, researchers efficiently queried the fructose metabolism pathway, identified its member genes, and located inhibitors for the AKR1B1 gene along with their IC50 values—all within a single integrated view.
OrbiTox’s distinctive ability to map comprehensive pathways among multiple query objects extends the renowned Swanson’s ABC inference paradigm, enabling users to generate hypotheses and reveal functional or mechanistic relationships between queried entities. This powerful and innovative capability positions OrbiTox as an essential tool for advancing translational discovery in toxicology and related fields.
