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Romano JD, Truong V, Kumar R, Venkatesan M, Graham BE, Hao Y, Matsumoto N, Li X, Wang Z, Ritchie MD, Shen L, Moore JH. The Alzheimer's Knowledge Base: A Knowledge Graph for Alzheimer Disease Research. J Med Internet Res 2024; 26:e46777. [PMID: 38635981 PMCID: PMC11066745 DOI: 10.2196/46777] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/24/2023] [Revised: 06/23/2023] [Accepted: 11/07/2023] [Indexed: 04/20/2024] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND As global populations age and become susceptible to neurodegenerative illnesses, new therapies for Alzheimer disease (AD) are urgently needed. Existing data resources for drug discovery and repurposing fail to capture relationships central to the disease's etiology and response to drugs. OBJECTIVE We designed the Alzheimer's Knowledge Base (AlzKB) to alleviate this need by providing a comprehensive knowledge representation of AD etiology and candidate therapeutics. METHODS We designed the AlzKB as a large, heterogeneous graph knowledge base assembled using 22 diverse external data sources describing biological and pharmaceutical entities at different levels of organization (eg, chemicals, genes, anatomy, and diseases). AlzKB uses a Web Ontology Language 2 ontology to enforce semantic consistency and allow for ontological inference. We provide a public version of AlzKB and allow users to run and modify local versions of the knowledge base. RESULTS AlzKB is freely available on the web and currently contains 118,902 entities with 1,309,527 relationships between those entities. To demonstrate its value, we used graph data science and machine learning to (1) propose new therapeutic targets based on similarities of AD to Parkinson disease and (2) repurpose existing drugs that may treat AD. For each use case, AlzKB recovers known therapeutic associations while proposing biologically plausible new ones. CONCLUSIONS AlzKB is a new, publicly available knowledge resource that enables researchers to discover complex translational associations for AD drug discovery. Through 2 use cases, we show that it is a valuable tool for proposing novel therapeutic hypotheses based on public biomedical knowledge.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joseph D Romano
- Institute for Biomedical Informatics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
- Center of Excellence in Environmental Toxicology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
- Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
| | - Van Truong
- Institute for Biomedical Informatics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
- Graduate Group in Genomics and Computational Biology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
- Department of Genetics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
| | - Rachit Kumar
- Institute for Biomedical Informatics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
- Graduate Group in Genomics and Computational Biology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
- Department of Genetics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
- Medical Scientist Training Program, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
| | - Mythreye Venkatesan
- Department of Computational Biomedicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States
| | - Britney E Graham
- Department of Computational Biomedicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States
| | - Yun Hao
- Institute for Biomedical Informatics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
- Graduate Group in Genomics and Computational Biology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
| | - Nick Matsumoto
- Department of Computational Biomedicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States
| | - Xi Li
- Department of Computational Biomedicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States
| | - Zhiping Wang
- Department of Computational Biomedicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States
| | - Marylyn D Ritchie
- Institute for Biomedical Informatics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
- Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
- Department of Genetics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
| | - Li Shen
- Institute for Biomedical Informatics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
- Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Informatics, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
| | - Jason H Moore
- Department of Computational Biomedicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States
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Li S, Nianogo RA, Lin Y, Wang H, Yu Y, Paul KC, Ritz B. Cost-effectiveness analysis of insecticide ban aimed at preventing Parkinson's disease in Central California. THE SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT 2024; 912:168913. [PMID: 38042187 PMCID: PMC11121568 DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.168913] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/27/2023] [Revised: 11/24/2023] [Accepted: 11/24/2023] [Indexed: 12/04/2023]
Abstract
BACKGROUND Our study assessed whether banning specific insecticides to reduce the PD burden in three Central California (CA) counties is cost-effective. METHOD We applied a cost-effectiveness analysis using a cohort-based Markov model to estimate the impact and costs of banning seven insecticides that were previously associated with PD in these counties as well as mixture exposures to some of these pesticides. We relied for our estimations on the cohort of 65- and 66-year-olds living in these counties who were unaffected by PD at baseline in 2020 and projected their incidence, costs, and reduction in quality-adjusted-life-years (QALY) loss due to developing PD over a 20-year period. We included a shiny app for modeling different scenarios (https://sherlockli.shinyapps.io/pesticide_pd_economics_part_2/). RESULTS According to our scenarios, banning insecticides to reduce the occurrence of PD in three Central CA counties was cost-effective relative to not banning insecticides. In the worst-case scenario of exposure to a single pesticide, methomyl, versus none would result in an estimated 205 (95 % CI: 75, 348) additional PD cases or 12 % (95 % CI: 4 %, 20 %) increase in PD cases over a 20-year period based on residential proximity to pesticide applications. The increase in PD cases due to methomyl would increase health-related costs by $72.0 million (95 % CI: $5.5 million, $187.4 million). Each additional PD patient due to methomyl exposure would incur $109,327 (95 % CI, $5554, $347,757) in costs per QALY loss due to PD. Exposure to methomyl based on workplace proximity to pesticide applications generated similar estimates. The highest PD burden and associated costs would be incurred from exposure to multiple pesticides simultaneously. CONCLUSION Our study provides an assessment of the cost-effectiveness of banning specific insecticides to reduce PD burden in terms of health-related QALYs and related costs. This information may help policymakers and stakeholders to make decisions concerning the regulation of pesticides.
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Affiliation(s)
- Shiwen Li
- Department of Epidemiology, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Roch A Nianogo
- Department of Epidemiology, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Yuyuan Lin
- Department of Epidemiology, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Hanwen Wang
- Department of Epidemiology, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Yu Yu
- Center for Health Policy Research, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Kimberly C Paul
- Department of Neurology, David Geffen School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, USA
| | - Beate Ritz
- Department of Epidemiology, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, Los Angeles, CA, USA; Department of Neurology, David Geffen School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
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Beasley JMT, Korn DR, Tucker NN, Alves ETM, Muratov EN, Bizon C, Tropsha A. ExEmPLAR (Extracting, Exploring, and Embedding Pathways Leading to Actionable Research): a user-friendly interface for knowledge graph mining. Bioinformatics 2024; 40:btad779. [PMID: 38175789 PMCID: PMC10812875 DOI: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btad779] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/24/2023] [Revised: 12/05/2023] [Accepted: 01/02/2024] [Indexed: 01/06/2024] Open
Abstract
SUMMARY Knowledge graphs are being increasingly used in biomedical research to link large amounts of heterogenous data and facilitate reasoning across diverse knowledge sources. Wider adoption and exploration of knowledge graphs in the biomedical research community is limited by requirements to understand the underlying graph structure in terms of entity types and relationships, represented as nodes and edges, respectively, and learn specialized query languages for graph mining and exploration. We have developed a user-friendly interface dubbed ExEmPLAR (Extracting, Exploring, and Embedding Pathways Leading to Actionable Research) to aid reasoning over biomedical knowledge graphs and assist with data-driven research and hypothesis generation. We explain the key functionalities of ExEmPLAR and demonstrate its use with a case study considering the relationship of Trypanosoma cruzi, the etiological agent of Chagas disease, to frequently associated cardiovascular conditions. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION ExEmPLAR is freely accessible at https://www.exemplar.mml.unc.edu/. For code and instructions for the using the application, see: https://github.com/beasleyjonm/AOP-COP-Path-Extractor.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jon-Michael T Beasley
- Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry, UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA
| | - Daniel R Korn
- Department of Computer Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA
| | - Nyssa N Tucker
- Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry, UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA
| | - Erick T M Alves
- Department of Pharmacy, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, SP 05508, Brazil
| | - Eugene N Muratov
- Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry, UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA
| | - Chris Bizon
- Renaissance Computing Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA
| | - Alexander Tropsha
- Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry, UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA
- Renaissance Computing Institute, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA
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Hao Y, Romano JD, Moore JH. Knowledge graph aids comprehensive explanation of drug and chemical toxicity. CPT Pharmacometrics Syst Pharmacol 2023; 12:1072-1079. [PMID: 37475158 PMCID: PMC10431039 DOI: 10.1002/psp4.12975] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/11/2023] [Revised: 04/04/2023] [Accepted: 04/06/2023] [Indexed: 07/22/2023] Open
Abstract
In computational toxicology, prediction of complex endpoints has always been challenging, as they often involve multiple distinct mechanisms. State-of-the-art models are either limited by low accuracy, or lack of interpretability due to their black-box nature. Here, we introduce AIDTox, an interpretable deep learning model which incorporates curated knowledge of chemical-gene connections, gene-pathway annotations, and pathway hierarchy. AIDTox accurately predicts cytotoxicity outcomes in HepG2 and HEK293 cells. It also provides comprehensive explanations of cytotoxicity covering multiple aspects of drug activity, including target interaction, metabolism, and elimination. In summary, AIDTox provides a computational framework for unveiling cellular mechanisms for complex toxicity endpoints.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yun Hao
- Genomics and Computational Biology (GCB) Graduate ProgramUniversity of PennsylvaniaPhiladelphiaPennsylvaniaUSA
| | - Joseph D. Romano
- Institute for Biomedical InformaticsUniversity of PennsylvaniaPhiladelphiaPennsylvaniaUSA
- Center of Excellence in Environmental ToxicologyUniversity of PennsylvaniaPhiladelphiaPennsylvaniaUSA
| | - Jason H. Moore
- Department of Computational BiomedicineCedars‐Sinai Medical CenterLos AngelesCaliforniaUSA
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Romano JD, Mei L, Senn J, Moore JH, Mortensen HM. Exploring genetic influences on adverse outcome pathways using heuristic simulation and graph data science. COMPUTATIONAL TOXICOLOGY (AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS) 2023; 25:100261. [PMID: 37829618 PMCID: PMC10569310 DOI: 10.1016/j.comtox.2023.100261] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/14/2023]
Abstract
Adverse outcome pathways provide a powerful tool for understanding the biological signaling cascades that lead to disease outcomes following toxicity. The framework outlines downstream responses known as key events, culminating in a clinically significant adverse outcome as a final result of the toxic exposure. Here we use the AOP framework combined with artificial intelligence methods to gain novel insights into genetic mechanisms that underlie toxicity-mediated adverse health outcomes. Specifically, we focus on liver cancer as a case study with diverse underlying mechanisms that are clinically significant. Our approach uses two complementary AI techniques: Generative modeling via automated machine learning and genetic algorithms, and graph machine learning. We used data from the US Environmental Protection Agency's Adverse Outcome Pathway Database (AOP-DB; aopdb.epa.gov) and the UK Biobank's genetic data repository. We use the AOP-DB to extract disease-specific AOPs and build graph neural networks used in our final analyses. We use the UK Biobank to retrieve real-world genotype and phenotype data, where genotypes are based on single nucleotide polymorphism data extracted from the AOP-DB, and phenotypes are case/control cohorts for the disease of interest (liver cancer) corresponding to those adverse outcome pathways. We also use propensity score matching to appropriately sample based on important covariates (demographics, comorbidities, and social deprivation indices) and to balance the case and control populations in our machine language training/testing datasets. Finally, we describe a novel putative risk factor for LC that depends on genetic variation in both the aryl-hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) and ATP binding cassette subfamily B member 11 (ABCB11) genes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joseph D. Romano
- Institute for Biomedical Informatics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
- Center of Excellence in Environmental Toxicology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
- Department of Biostatistics, Epidemiology, & Informatics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, United States
| | - Liang Mei
- Oak Ridge Associated Universities, Oak Ridge, TN, United States
| | - Jonathan Senn
- Oak Ridge Associated Universities, Oak Ridge, TN, United States
| | - Jason H. Moore
- Department of Computational Biomedicine, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles, CA, United States
| | - Holly M. Mortensen
- United States Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment, Research Triangle Park, NC, United States
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