Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, School of Public Health, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599-7431, USA.
Environ Health Perspect. 2010 Aug;118(8):1047-50. doi: 10.1289/ehp.1001925. Epub 2010 May 18.
The National Academies' Standing Committee on Use of Emerging Science for Environmental Health Decisions held a meeting (21-22 September 2009 in Washington, DC) titled "Computational Toxicology: From Data to Analyses to Applications." This commentary reflects on the presentations and roundtable discussions from the meeting that were designed to review the state of the art in the field and the practical applications of the new science and to provide focus to the field.
The meeting considered two topics: the emerging data streams amenable to computational modeling and data mining, and the emerging data analysis and modeling tools.
Computational toxicology is a subdiscipline of toxicology that aims to use the mathematical, statistical, modeling, and computer science tools to better understand the mechanisms through which a given chemical induces harm and, ultimately, to be able to predict adverse effects of the toxicants on human health and/or the environment. The participants stressed the importance of computational toxicology to the future of environmental health sciences and regulatory decisions in public health; however, many challenges remain to be addressed before the findings from high-throughput screens and in silico models may be considered sufficiently robust and informative.
Many scientists, regulators, and the general public believe that new and better ways to assess human toxicity are now needed, and technological breakthroughs are empowering the field of toxicity assessment. Even though the application of computational toxicology to environmental health decisions requires additional efforts, the merger of the power of computers with biological information is poised to deliver new tools and knowledge.
美国国家科学院环境健康决策中新兴科学利用常设委员会于 2009 年 9 月 21 日至 22 日在华盛顿特区举行了一次题为“计算毒理学：从数据到分析再到应用”的会议。本评论反映了会议的演讲和小组讨论，旨在审查该领域的最新进展和新科学的实际应用，并为该领域提供重点。
会议审议了两个主题：适合计算建模和数据挖掘的新兴数据流，以及新兴数据分析和建模工具。
计算毒理学是毒理学的一个分支，旨在利用数学、统计学、建模和计算机科学工具更好地理解特定化学物质引起伤害的机制，并最终能够预测有毒物质对人类健康和/或环境的不良影响。与会者强调了计算毒理学对环境健康科学和公共卫生监管决策未来的重要性；然而，在高通量筛选和计算机模型的结果被认为足够稳健和有信息之前，仍有许多挑战需要解决。
许多科学家、监管机构和公众认为，现在需要新的和更好的方法来评估人类毒性，技术突破正在增强毒性评估领域的实力。尽管将计算毒理学应用于环境健康决策需要额外的努力，但计算机的力量与生物信息的融合有望提供新的工具和知识。
