Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
belonging to the Nanoparticle Ontology) and the anatomical location “Brain” (term
belonging to the Foundational Model of Anatomy). Results show the PMIDs
(PubMed Identifiers) of the articles matching the query together with other relevant
information such as the title of the paper and the date of publication. To complete
this approach a collaborative effort will be needed—for instance, to improve
searching, annotations, integration, etc. This is an area facing many challenges.
Another nanomedicine-related text mining project we are currently working on
is the development of an inventory of existing nanoparticles/nanodevices. The
inventory is automatically populated by extracting relevant information regarding
nanoparticles from scientific papers reporting recent advances in nanotechnology
and nanomedicine. The extracted information includes, for instance, the names of
the nanoparticles, their nano-scale size-dependent properties (e.g. quantum con-
finement, surface plasmon resonance, superparamagnetism, etc.), their morphology
(e.g. nanospheres, nanoreefs, nanoboxes, etc.), their synthesis methods (e.g. attrition,
pyrolysis, etc.), their intended functionality (e.g. drug delivery, tissue repair, etc.),
and their potential toxicity (both medical and environmental).
5
Conclusions
We have presented here a summary of concepts and suggested structure related to
a new informatics field of application, which presents significant challenges for
both informaticians and specialists in nanotechnology and nanomedicine. As we
have mentioned, nanoinformatics can provide solutions to a large number of pro-
blems arising in nanomedicine. In the past decades, physicians and biologists have
faced problems in their research and practice areas which do not differ too much—
at least from an abstract perspective—to what nanotechnologists and nanomedical
experts are facing today. The primary information-related issues include data
integration, standards, decision support, storage and access to information, model-
ing and simulation. In this regard, nanoinformatics can decisively contribute to
accelerate research in the different nano areas, as has happened earlier in a wide
range of—omics projects.
Acknowledgments
The present work has been funded, in part, by the ACTION-Grid support
action (FP7-ICT-2007-2-224176), the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (FIS/AES
PS09/00069 and COMBIOMED-RETICS), the Ibero-NBIC network (CYTED 209RT0366), the
European Commission through the ACGT integrated project (FP6-2005-IST-026996), and the
Comunidad de Madrid, Spain.
References
Aerts S, Haeussler M, van Vooren S, Griffith OL, Hulpiau P, Jones SJ, Montgomery SB, Bergman
CM; Open Regulatory Annotation Consortium (2008). Text-mining assisted regulatory annota-
tion. Genome Biol, 9(2): R31.
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