Application of the Adverse Outcome Pathway concept and bioinformatics for mechanistic understanding of COVID-19
The Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) framework was originally developed as a knowledge management framework to systematically structure and causally connect mechanistic information to adverse effects. The AOP concept is currently targeted towards application within toxicology and chemical risk assessment. However, it has also been suggested to be useful to other areas such as clinical and pre-clinical research.
We recently proposed a concept allowing for information flow among the three fields of disease biology, AOP-driven toxicology, and development of alternative non-animal methods. The concept is hypothesized to support the current need for mechanistic understanding in the recently emerged pandemic caused by the corona virus, SARS-CoV-2, which induces the disease COVID-19. This project aims to apply the AOP framework to the modelling and mechanistic understanding of COVID-19. The project is tightly coupled to the European project CIAO (Modelling the Pathogenesis of COVID-19 using the Adverse Outcome Pathway Framework) coordinated by the European Joint Research Centre (https://www.ciao-covid.net/).
Funding
IMM’s funding of strategic grants: Research on COVID-19