Dr. David Paik, Department of Radiology, Stanford University
Dr. Nathan Baker, Center for Computational Biology, Washington University School of Medicine

Nanotechnology has been applied to a wide spectrum of scientific research including very important life science applications. Nanoparticles are combinatorial and consist of a core constituent material, imaging/therapeutic payloads, and biological surface modifiers. This combinatorial nature creates a huge space of possible nanoparticle compositions. Informatics tools are a natural fit for addressing this need by providing decision support in the analysis and design of nanoparticles. As applied to cancer, nanotechnology is a new and promising approach to diagnostics and therapeutics with applications in imaging, early detection, reporting efficacy, and multifunctional therapeutics. Cancer nanotechnology presents a unique opportunity for informatics-driven approaches to accelerate discovery and translation.

The aims of this project are to integrate new sources of nanoparticle data into the NCBO Resource Index and develop a user friendly interface to search and browse nanoparticles. Data from caNanoLab, a curated repository of nanoparticle data, will be integrated into the NCBO Resource Index. This will provide detailed nanoparticle information needed by researchers in the cancer field. In addition, since caNanoLab is a node on caGrid this work will also lay the groundwork for incorporating a much wider range of biological information into the NCBO Resource Index from caBIG applications via queries of caGrid. To cover the need for chemical information needed for nanoparticles, data extracted from searches of PubChem will also be added to the NCBO Resource Index.

The second aim is to develop a graphically driven user interface to browse and search for semantically-related nanoparticle information stored in the NCBO Resource Index.  The browse mode will allow a user to interactively traverse the NCBO Resource Index data for semantically-related nanoparticle information. The search mode will allow users to specify nanoparticle components based on terms in the Nanoparticle Ontology.