Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD)

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ABSTRACT Most human diseases involve interactions between genetic and environmental factors. Although the environment is implicated in most chronic diseases, the etiology and mechanisms of action underlying these diseases remain unclear. It is estimated that more than 80,000 chemicals are currently used in commerce, challenging elucidation about chemical mechanisms-of-action and prioritization of environmental health research. Integration of diverse data is required to understand environment- disease associations, mechanisms of chemical action, toxicity prediction and development of effective therapeutic interventions. In 2004, the Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD; http://ctdbase.org) was launched publicly to address an unmet need for a public data resource dedicated exclusively to advancing understanding about environment-disease connections. Today, through diversified funding approaches and in response to the evolving needs of the environmental health research community, CTD provides a combination of richly annotated data describing chemical- gene-phenotype-disease networks, exposure information, and novel analysis tools that enable user- driven discoveries about environmental influences on human health. Currently, CTD provides >2.5 million manually curated relationships for 16,400 chemicals, 51,300 genes/proteins, 5,500 phenotypes, and 7,200 diseases, contextualized with over 870 anatomical terms from approximately 600 species. CTD curated data has been integrated into >145 other biomedical resources further extending the reach of its impact. CTD has become a valued resource on which the environmental health research community relies. We are requesting funding to: 1) continue advancing understanding about the complex connections between environmental exposures and human health through ongoing manual curation of chemicals, genes, phenotypes, diseases and exposure data from the scientific literature; evaluation and integration of select external data sets; and baseline technical support; 2) enhance curation efficiency through further development of our text-mining and online curation tools; and 3) selectively restructure existing code, software, and database design (refactoring) to improve the structure and performance of CTD. This proposed project will protect and extend NIH investments in CTD and ensure the ongoing provision of this key resource for the environmental health research community.