The Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing is an academic center affiliated with the Division of Toxicological Sciences in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences of the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health.

 

Johns Hopkins School of Public Health

Abstract for TestSmart--Pharmaceuticals: An Efficient and Humane Approach to Predictors of Potential Toxic Effects of Drugs

A Bioinformatics Approach to Identify Microarray Gene Expression Toxicant Signature Patterns

Pierre R. Bushel
National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

DNA microarray technology has emerged to the forefront of gene expression analysis as a tool by which researchers can detect genome-wide differential expression of thousands of genes. Recent interest in identifying transcription signature patterns has led to an increase in the use of microarray technology to simultaneously analyze, monitor and characterize changes in gene expression profiles in response to serum induction, cell cycle changes, cellular processes, genotoxic stress and oncogenesis.

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Microarray Center (NMC) is combining the fields of toxicology and genomics to better understand mechanistic based risk assessment, predictive toxicology and hazard identification of a variety of compounds. This new sub-discipline, termed toxicogenomics, stems from the use of high-density microarray technology and toxicology to measure changes in gene expression patterns that are different in biological models following exposure to toxic agents. Essential to this effort are bioinformatics, computational biology and statistical analysis which lend the biological informatics resources, robust computing power and mathematical methodologies to confidently correlate gene expression profiles of unknown agents with the signature patterns of known toxicants to ultimately link gene expression information with toxicological endpoints.