ToxAssay: a hierarchical model-driven tool for advanced toxicogenomics biomarker discovery

Understanding the genetic basis of drug-induced toxicity is crucial for drug development. In-silico analysis of toxicogenomics datasets facilitates early detection of toxicity biomarkers. However, existing tools struggle with the complex interdependencies among hierarchically structured variables, leading to inaccurate biomarker identification. To address this limitation, we developed a Hierarchical Linear Model (HLM) and implemented it in the R package ToxAssay, offering extensive functionality for comprehensive toxicity assessment.

ToxAssay outperforms existing methods by improving biomarker detection and computational efficiency. Applied to glutathione depletion-induced toxicity, it prioritized 71 key genes and identified 26 core genes with high discriminative accuracy (AUC = 0.97) and strong cross-correlation (Pearson's r = 0.88) with external datasets. Additionally, our advance outcome pathway (AOP) analysis algorithm uncovered disease outcomes linked to glutathione depletion. These findings provide precise insights into the molecular mechanisms driving drug-induced toxicity.

ToxAssay is available as an open-source R package at https://github.com/Fun-Gene/toxassay.