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v-Tissue 2009: The EU-US Workshop on Virtual Tissues
Citation:
SHAH, I. A. v-Tissue 2009: The EU-US Workshop on Virtual Tissues. Presented at Multiscale Modeling Consortium; A Web-Based Presentation, RTP, NC, July 25, 2008.
Impact/Purpose:
The goal of the Virtual Liver is to provide useful information on adverse effects that present challenges in risk assessment at the EPA. Due to limited resources, it is not practical to model all adverse effects. A number of pesticides and relatively inert chemicals cause liver cancer in rodents after long-term persistent exposure without any indication of genotoxicity. It is unclear whether any level of these chemicals causes liver cancer in humans. Mapping the wiring diagram of the liver related to such chemicals in humans vs. rodents provides a useful approach for prioritising the scope of the project.
Description:
The liver plays a key role in removing chemicals from the body and frequently shows the earliest signs of their harmful effects. Animal testing gives useful information about the effects of environmental chemicals, however, the relevance of these findings to humans is not always clear. To address this challenge scientists at The National Center for Computational Toxicology are leading the development of a "Virtual Liver", which is a large-scale biologically-based computer model of the organ. The long-term objective of the Virtual Liver is to simulate the effect of chemicals accurately, efficiently and more humanely.