Computational Toxicology

Abstract

Abstract The advent of high speed computer systems has resulted in the evolution of the field of computational toxicology. The application of these computational tools to molecular biomarker development has facilitated the evolution of this field in a number of areas by accelerating access and appreciation of both the current state of knowledge about molecular biomarkers and delineating new avenues of productive biomarker research via systems biology approaches. These tools include among others: data mining of both the published and unpublished literature, QSAR/PBPK modeling programs to evaluate chemical–biological system interactions, systems biology programs to identify likely key pathways and networks, adverse outcome pathway analysis, and high throughput screening methodologies to identify linkages between specific chemical exposures and toxicity/carcinogenicity. Application of information from these techniques has already saved both time and money in the search for useful candidate biomarkers. This chapter will briefly review a number of examples of how computational toxicology approaches have aided the field of biomarkers and may yet further speed biomarker development by translation of molecular pathway data for risk assessment purposes.