On Tuesday, 18th May 2021, the NanoCommons team, in a joint initiative with the NanoSafety Cluster, will offer an online webinar on the use of their Molecular Initiating Event (MIE) Prediction Tool accessible via the NanoCommons Knowledge Base (NC KB).

Introduction and Host: Martin Himly, PLUS and Chair of NanoSafety Cluster WG-A on Education, Training, and Communication

Webinar Speaker: Abhijit Dasgupta, UCD

Panel for Q+A session: Vadim Zhernovkov and Vladimir Lobaskin, UCD

Toxicity testing and regulation of advanced materials at the nanoscale i.e., nano safety, is challenged by the growing number of nanomaterials. The existing animal-reliant toxicity testing tools are onerous in terms of time and resources. There is a need for faster, cheaper, sensitive and effective animal alternatives that are supported by mechanistic evidence. Moreover, there is an urgency for developing alternative testing strategies. The Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP)-based approaches provide pragmatic insights to promote the development of alternative testing strategies. MIE is the first step in an AOP and can be considered as a chemical interaction between a chemical toxicant and a biological molecule. Key chemical characteristics can be identified and used to model the chemistry of these MIEs. Predicting actual MIEs without time-resolved data establishing the MIE is challenging. Risk assessment requires information on the exposure conditions (e.g., route, dose, duration and frequency) needed to cause an AO.

The NanoCommons MIE gene set database (NanoCommons GS-MIE DB) captures:

Gene signatures (GS) of MIEs by integrating knowledge from KEGG, REACTOME, GO, WikiPathways public databases;

Custom gene sets from published data;

To date, manual collection of 132 gene sets representing three different types of MIE actions:

    MIE1. Disruption of lung surfactant functionality

    MIE2. Lysosomal destabilization

    MIE3. Oxidation of cell membrane

The expected duration is 60 minutes with time for Q&A session in the end.

Target audience: Bench and computational scientists looking into automated ways to enrich the knowledge obtained from their datasets by predicting MIEs for AOP-based toxicity assessment.

Expectation: Willing to learn new things and active participation in the interactive webinar.

The webinar will take place on Tuesday, May 18th, from 15:00 till 16:00h CEST.

Feel free to join and please do not forget to register here: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/6523350125940482062

You can find more information about the webinar here.

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the webinar.

Please, be aware that some personal information may be collected for statistical purposes, however, in a blinded and anonymous way. The workshop will be partially recorded for educational purposes.

You will find updates with more information about NanoCommons and training materials here.

Feel free to redistribute this information within your projects and networks. We are happy to have as many participants as possible and to help the community with the FAIRification of their data by offering an insight into in silico tools offered by the NanoCommons Knowledge Base in an integrated and thus more straightforward way.

The NanoCommons team will be happy to answer your questions and to guide you in your requests!