eSTAR

Emerging Systems Toxicology for the Assessment of Risk (eSTAR) Committee

Mission Statement

The mission of HESI’s Emerging Systems Toxicology for the Assessment of Risk (eSTAR) Committee is to develop and deliver innovative systems toxicology approaches for risk assessment. The committee aims to catalyze adoption of new translational and predictive tools that guide decision-making based on mechanistic understanding of toxicological response.

Working Groups

  • Use of Transcriptomic Point of Departure (POD) for Chemical Risk Assessments

    This Working Group has compiled a broad membership of experts across sectors and chemical classes to write a recently accepted manuscript on the state of the science on the use and potential applications of transcriptomic PODs. Future work will include discussion of bioinformatic methods to derive transcriptomic PODs.

  • Carcinogenomics Project

    A manuscript was accepted describing the group’s strategy to create transcriptomic biomarkers for particular pathways leading to rat tumors. Current work is to derive and refine the biomarkers. There is also planned experimental work to see gene expression difference in wild type and knock out rats in response to reference compounds.

  • miRNA Biomarkers Project

    Designed and launched a multi-site experimental program on the use of exosomal miRNAs expressed in response to renal toxicants.

  • TGx-DDI Project

    The HESI eSTAR committee is proud to announce that it was awarded a $250,000 USD grant (U01) as part of the USFDA’s Biomarker Qualification Program in June 2022. This funding will be partnered with Committee resources to support a four-site ring trial generating additional data on the TGx-DDI (TGx = toxicogenomics; DDI = DNA damage inducing) biomarker. The TgX-DDI biomarker is currently under review by the FDA as part of the FDA Biomarker Qualification program. Pending the results of this final study, the marker is anticipated to gain FDA approval for optional use as added weight of evidence in the assessment of genotoxicity. The marker has the potential to improve upon the low specificity of in vitro chromosome damage assays used in current testing and to aid drug development by providing mechanistic insights into transcriptional changes occurring in genes involved in key DNA damage pathways.

    Learn more about the use of the TGx-DDI transcriptomic biomarker for the genotoxicity assessment of data-poor chemicals here (poster presented at the 2021 EMGS Virtual Annual Meeting by Anne-Marie Fortin, University of Ottawa).

  • FFPE Project

    A manuscript on DNA de-modification analysis of clinical tumor samples was accepted; the project will sunset after an educational webinar.

  • Cell Painting - Oasis Consortium

    This newly formed group is planning a proof of concept study to see if Cell Painting data (with or without transcriptomic data) can be predictive of existing rat liver data.

  • Error Corrected Sequencing

    This newly formed group is exploring the use of error corrected sequencing to detect clonal expansion of non-genotoxic carcinogens.

Committee Publications

Demodifying RNA for Transcriptomic Analyses of Archival Formalin-Fixed Paraffin-Embedded Samples

Archival formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue samples offer a vast but largely untapped resource for genomic research. The primary technical issues limiting use of FFPE samples are RNA yield and quality. In this study, we evaluated methods to demodify RNA highly fragmented and crosslinked by formalin fixation. ...

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Development and Validation of a High-Throughput Transcriptomic Biomarker to Address 21st Century Genetic Toxicology Needs

Interpretation of positive genotoxicity findings using the current in vitro testing battery is a major challenge to industry and regulatory agencies. These tests, especially mammalian cell assays, have high sensitivity but suffer from low specificity, leading to high rates of irrelevant positive findings (i.e., positive ...

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Committee Resources

HESI Staff

Leadership Team

  • Brian Chorley, PhD

    US Environmental Protection Agency

  • Deidre Dalmas Wilk, PhD

    GlaxoSmithKline

  • Scott Auerbach, PhD

    National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

Committee Events

No results.

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    [thumbnails_cached] => 
    [allow_query_attachment_by_filename:protected] => 
    [stopwords:WP_Query:private] => 
    [compat_fields:WP_Query:private] => Array
        (
            [0] => query_vars_hash
            [1] => query_vars_changed
        )

    [compat_methods:WP_Query:private] => Array
        (
            [0] => init_query_flags
            [1] => parse_tax_query
        )

)

Contact Us

Health and Environmental Sciences Institute (HESI)

hesi@hesiglobal.org
Phone: +1-202-659-8404
Fax: +1-202-659-3859

740 15th Street NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20005

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