| Toxicogenomics in Risk Assessment: An Overview of an HESI Collaborative Research Program William Pennie,1 Syril D. Pettit,2 and Peter G. Lord3 1Drug Safety Evaluation Department, Pfizer Inc, Groton, Connecticut,
USA; 2ILSI Health and Environmental Sciences Institute, Washington,
DC, USA; 3Johnson & Johnson Pharmaceuticals, Raritan, New Jersey,
USA Abstract
The value of genomic approaches in hypothesis generation is being realized as a tool for understanding toxicity and consequently contributing to an assessment of drug and chemical safety. In 1999 the membership of the International Life Sciences Institute Health and Environmental Sciences Institute formed a committee to develop a collaborative scientific program to address issues, challenges, and opportunities afforded by the emerging field of toxicogenomics. Experts and advisors from academia and government laboratories participate on the committee, along with approximately 30 corporate member organizations from the pharmaceutical, agrochemical, chemical, and consumer products industries. The committee has designed, conducted, and analyzed numerous toxicogenomic experiments within the broad fields of hepatotoxicity, nephrotoxicity, and genotoxicity. The considerable body of data generated by these programs has been instrumental in increasing understanding of sources of biological and technical variability in the alignment of toxicant-induced transcription changes with the accepted mechanism of action of these agents and the challenges in the consistent analysis and sharing of the voluminous data sets generated by these approaches. Recognizing the importance of standardized microarray data formats and public repository databases as the mechanism by which microarray data can be compared and interpreted by the scientific community, the committee has partnered with the European Bioinformatics Institute to develop a database to house the data generated by its collaborative research. Key words: genomics, HESI, microarrays, risk assessment, toxicogenomics. Environ Health Perspect 112:417-419 (2004) . doi:10.1289/txg.6674 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 15 January 2004]
This article is part of the mini-monograph "Application of Genomics to Mechanism-Based Risk Assessment." Address correspondence to S. Pettit, ILSI Health and Environmental Sciences Institute, 9th Floor, One Thomas Circle NW, Washington, DC 20005 USA. Telephone: (202) 659-3306. Fax: (202) 659-3617. E-mail: spettit@ilsi.org We thank the participants of the HESI Genomics Committee for their contributions of time, expertise, and experimental research. Special thanks go to our public-sector steering committee advisors for their assistance in the review of this publication and their leadership on the committee and to G. Morgan and D. Robinson for their important roles in initiating this research program. The authors declare they have no competing financial interests. Received 14 August 2003 ; accepted 15 December 2003.
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