PUBLICATION | An introduction to systems toxicology; Plant, 2014

A new review article from Nick Plant (An Introduction to Systems Toxicology; Toxicology Research, 2014) provides an excellent overview of the need for systems toxicology, and the available approaches: covering relational databases, rule and structure alerts and modelling, ranging from small to multiscale and from qualitative to quantitaitve models.

Plant approaches this topic from the perspective of drug discovery, and links systems toxicology to the fascinating prospect of network drug targeting, in which drug discovery could in fact start with drug combinations, with each drug alone appearing minimally active. The risk would be that this ‘synergistic pharmacology’ might be accompanied by ‘synergistic toxicology’; however there are some encouraging signs that in fact combination therapies are generally more specific than single therapies.

AOP | AOP-wiki now public access

The AOP-wiki is now public access, and should constitute an invaluable resource in terms of making the AOP concept more tangible, providing state-of-the-art AOP examples and allowing users to start thinking about the practical applications of AOPs and the wider implementation of the AOP concept.

The wiki is part of a wider knowledgebase and will fit with other components of the knowledgebase including Effectopedia (OECD), the AOP Xplorer (US Army Corps of Engineers – Engineering Research and Development Center) and the Intermediate Effects DB (EC JRC).