Comparative toxicogenomics database (CTD)

There is an expressed need for the inclusion of exposure data into the equations used to prioritize environmental health research, particularly areas that affect vulnerable populations (e.g., agricultural communities). This need is not being met. The lack of centralization and contextualization of exposure information in the public domain is limiting the ability of researchers to fully exploit the potential of these data. For several years, we have been developing the publicly available resource, CTD, to promote mechanistic understanding of environment-disease connections using curation and data integration strategies. Our ability to leverage the CTD infrastructure, its biological framework, and our substantial curation, software engineering and statistical expertise uniquely positions us to immediately address the need for centralization and biological contextualization of exposure data. Importantly, this project has the support of the exposure science community. We formed an Exposure Curation Working Group with active and diverse members of this community to develop an appropriate and valuable scope for curation and an exposure ontology, which will be completed in Summer 2010 and will be used for this proposed project. In addition to addressing the deficits that have long been facing the exposure science community, curation and integration of exposure data will further enhance the value of CTD by providing 'real-world' exposure context for our existing chemical, gene/protein, pathway, and disease data sets. The resulting publicly available resource will coordinate data and analysis tools key to enhancing the capacity to prioritize environmental health research and uncover the complex connections between the environment and human disease.