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The NIEHS Predictive-Toxicology Evaluation Project
D W Bristol1, J T Wachsman, A Greenwell
1Laboratory of Environmental Carcinogenesis and Mutagenesis, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Research Triangle Park, North Carolina 27709, USA. bristol@niehs.nih.gov
Environmental Health Perspectives
|October 1, 1996
Summary
The Predictive-Toxicology Evaluation (PTE) project rigorously assesses predictive toxicology (PT) models using National Toxicology Program (NTP) bioassays. This evaluation provides objective performance data for PT methods applied to new chemical substances.
Area of Science:
- Environmental Health Sciences
- Toxicology
- Computational Biology
Background:
- The Predictive-Toxicology Evaluation (PTE) project was established to objectively evaluate the performance of predictive toxicology (PT) methods.
- It leverages ongoing testing by the U.S. National Toxicology Program (NTP) to assess PT models on untested chemical substances.
Purpose of the Study:
- To rigorously evaluate the performance and estimate the true error of predictive toxicology models.
- To encourage the publication of prospective predictions in peer-reviewed journals for comparison.
- To provide a platform for comparing and contrasting various PT approaches in real-world applications.
Main Methods:
- Identifying standardized NTP chemical bioassays for evaluation.
- Announcing and advertising the evaluation experiment to researchers.
- Encouraging researchers to publish their predictions using diverse methods.
Main Results:
- Summarizes predictions and results for 44 chemical carcinogenesis bioassays from PTE-1.
- Identifies 30 chemical carcinogenesis bioassays for the upcoming PTE-2.
- Presents a table of published prediction sets to date.
Conclusions:
- The PTE project offers a unique approach to evaluating PT models.
- It highlights challenges in estimating the true error of models predicting open-system behavior.
- Lessons learned from PTE-1 and PTE-2 inform the future of predictive toxicology.