More on DSSTox Standard Toxicity Fields

DSSTox Standard Toxicity Fields are being incorporated into all DSSTox data files, where applicable. These provide an initial common set of toxicity information fields spanning diverse toxicity databases and, hence, they offer common search metrics to explore diverse toxicity information domains. This page provides a general overview of the objectives, definitions, and features of DSSTox standard toxicity fields.

Main Objectives:

To promote minimum standards for toxicity study annotation of public chemical toxicity databases
To provide toxicity field content that will facilitate text searching in conjunction with chemical structure searching across DSSTox SDF files
To coordinate with other on-going public efforts working to develop and promote use of controlled toxicity vocabularies and ontologies in order to facilitate cross-platform communication and relational database searching (see, e.g., the ToxML standardization effort)

DSSTox Standard Toxicity Fields as of 17February2009:

StudyType
Endpoint
Species
Assay_Target new field added Feb2009

Future expansion of DSSTox Standard Toxicity Fields:

Note that additional fields, such as Sex, Tissue, Benchmark_Dose, etc. will be considered for addition to the current list as new DSSTox databases containing this information are created. The main criteria for incorporation of new DSSTox Standard Toxicity Fields is the general utility they provide in searching across the diverse content of DSSTox data files. Note that in all cases, standard toxicity field names and content are being coordinated with the public ToxML standardization effort. The latter effort is focused on providing detailed annotation of toxicity experiments and creation of a large sets of controlled vocabulary to describe these. In contrast, the present DSSTox effort has broader objectives. Most often, DSSTox data files are representing only summary toxicity information of use to the Structure-Activity Relationship (SAR) modeling community. In addition, DSSTox databases are typically developed to complement published literature studies or on-line existing databases and, hence, often must conform to existing data terminolgy. Within these competing objectives, however, we will coordinate toxicity vocabulary usage whereever possible with the ToxML standardization effort as we believe that this serves the larger, long-term interests of the modeling and SAR community.

Field Name	Allowable Values	Description	Comments
StudyType Return to Top	defined text CPDBAS: Carcinogenicity DBPCAN: SAR prediction EPAFHM: Acute Toxicity FDAMDD: Clinical Reports NCTRER: Receptor Binding IRISTR: Human Health Exposure Toxicity Review for Risk Assessment ARYEXP: microarray GEOGSE: microarray	Field is used to label all records in the database, generally with the same entry, and is designed to facilitate record identification for cross-database structure searching. Field entry refers to the main type of toxicity study for which data is represented in the database.	Field names and content are being coordinated with the public ToxML standardization effort. Abbreviations in field entries eliminated (June 2007).
Endpoint	defined text CPDBAS: TD50, Tumor Target Sites DBPCAN: Carcinogenicity EPAFHM: LC50 FDAMDD: Maximum Recommended Daily Dose NCTRER: Estrogen Receptor Relative Binding Affinity IRISTR: cancer; acute; short-term; sub-chronic; chronic; developmental	Field is used to label all records in the database, generally with the same entry, and is designed to facilitate record identification for cross-database structure searching. Field entry refers to the type of toxicity measure represented within the database. Abbreviations are defined on the main information page for the respective databases and in the corresponding Field Definition File.	Field names and content are being coordinated with the public ToxML standardization effort. Abbreviations in field entries eliminated (June 2007).
Species Return to Top	defined text CPDBAS: rat, mouse, hamster, dog, rhesus, cynomolgus, tree shrew, bush baby DBPCAN: EPAFHM: fathead minnow FDAMDD: human NCTRER: rat IRISTR: rodent, human, dog, rabbit	Field is used to label all records in the database, generally with the same entry, and is designed to facilitate record identification for cross-database structure searching. Field entry refers to the species of animal(s) listed in the data file (IRISTR) or record (CPDBAS) and used in the toxicity study or studies. Field is not included in database if the study did not use animals or animal-derived assays, such as a study reporting only SAR predictions (see, e.g., DBPCAN).	Field names and content are being coordinated with the public ToxML standardization effort.
Assay_Target Return to Top	defined text KIERBL: Rat uterine cytosol (RUC) estrogen receptor (ER)	Field is used to label all records in the database, generally with the same entry, and is designed to facilitate record identification for cross-database structure searching. Field entry refers to the assay target (tissue and receptor) in the case of receptor-based assays and is intended provide assay-specific annotation for resources such as EPA ACToR and PubChem . Field is not included in database if the study did not involve a target receptor-based assay.	Field names and content are being coordinated with the public EPA ACToR and ToxML standardization efforts.

More on DSSTox Standard Toxicity Fields

Local Navigation