Category Research project
  • Expositionsschätzung
  • Risikokommunikation

The European Nanotechnology Community Informatics Platform: Bridging data and disciplinary gaps for industry and regulators (NanoCommons)

Project status
Completed
Project start
Jan 2018
Project end
Jun 2022
Acronym
NanoCommons
Department
Chemikalien- und Produktsicherheit

Description and Objective

The overarching aim of the H2020 Infrastructure project NanoCommons was to create a community framework and a knowledge infrastructure that organises and visualises data and data relationships, makes it accessible and integrates computational tools and in silico workflows to support nanomaterial (NM) risk assessment. To achieve this NanoCommons addressed the following issues: - integration and federation of existing NM datasets describing physico-chemical properties and interaction mechanisms (beyond toxicity), protocols, criteria for quality assurance and underpinning ontologies; - compilation and development of a user-friendly interface for a suite of computational tools for mechanistic and statistical modelling, read-across, grouping, safe-by-design and life cycle assessment, and bench-marking of their predictive power; and - provision of (typically remote) access to its KnowledgeBase, modelling toolbox and the supporting expertise, to the broader user community.

Result

The overarching goal of NanoCommons was to connect communities in order to establish a knowledge platform/ infrastructure that organises data and data relationships and makes it accessible. Moreover, computational tools and in silico workflows should be integrated. This aimed at supporting nanomaterial (NM) risk assessment and Safe-by-Design approaches. In the following the most important outcomes with BfRshort forGerman Federal Institute for Risk Assessment contribution will be summarized while the final report contains a detailled description of all results.
One work focus at the BfRshort forGerman Federal Institute for Risk Assessment was the establishment and application of bioinformatic tools for supporting nanomaterial grouping. Specifically different random forest algorithms for classification were tested on existing nano datasets. A case study could be successfully completed. Moreover, the BfRshort forGerman Federal Institute for Risk Assessment also aimed to integrate Omics data, in particular proteomics data to support grouping.Another important focus was to establish the Advanced Nano FAIR Implementation Network (IN) within the GO FAIR initiative, in close collaboration with the EU project Gov4Nano. This implementation network worked to connect stakeholders to implement the FAIR principles in order to optimize relevant data and data bases according to the FAIR principle, rendering them findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable. Following the launch of the AdvancedNano IN, the BfRshort forGerman Federal Institute for Risk Assessment aimed to attract further partners and projects into the network and to generally raise awareness about the FAIR principles. For this purpose, a detailed questionnaire has been developed and circulated among various ongoing europaen and national nano-projects to get insights into specific activities of these projects to implement the FAIR principles. The received input was merged into a "Map of FAIR Activities" and was also fed into the publication, which is currently under peer review. The BfRshort forGerman Federal Institute for Risk Assessment also continued to work on making nanoEHS proteomics data more FAIR, in colloboration with NanoInformaTIX. Typically, in the field of proteomics the original datasets are uploaded in public repositories such that they are findable and accessible. However, they are neither interoperable nor ready for reuse, as nanospecific meta-data is completely missing. Thus, BfRshort forGerman Federal Institute for Risk Assessment developed a template to collect the nanospecific metadata, upload it in a nanospecific database (eNanoMapper) and thereby link it to the original proteomics data. In a first step, the BfRshort forGerman Federal Institute for Risk Assessment also assessed which nanoEHS proteomics data are acessible in public repositories such as e.g. PRIDE. For those nanospecific metadata was collected and linked via the template in eNanoMapper. The publically available proteomics data are now also findable via eNanoMapper. Moreover, by linking the metadata their reuse was facilitated.
Type of project

Third-party funded project

Research focus

Nanotechnologie: Nachweis, Toxikologie, Risikobewertung und Risikowahrnehmung

Organisational units and partners

Lead specialist group: Faser- und Nanotoxikologie (76)
Contact persons: PDshort foroutside lecturer Dr. Andrea Haase
External partner: University of Birmingham, National Technical University of Athens, University College Dublin, Leitat Technological Center, BioNanoNet Forschungsgesellschaft mbH, Universität Salzburg, Novamechanics LTD, Biomax Informatics AG, Universität Maastricht, Duke University, Oregon State University, Edelweiss Connect GmbH, Britisches Zentrum für Ökologie und Hydrologie

Funding body and grant number

Europäische Union
731032