L. Hirschman, A. Morgan, and M. Colosimo, “Patterns of Pathogenesis MITRE Sponsored Research Final Report,” 2006.
Abstract
This MSR has focused on the development of tools to analyze infectious pathogens. The rationale is that many pathogens share a set of functions that allow them to invade a host cell, evade the host cell defenses, multiply inside the host cell, and eventually escape both the cell and the host organism to spread infection. Our goal has been to bring to bear the rich set of bioinformatics resources that are becoming available, from gene sequences to knowledge embedded in the biological literature, in order to understand these “virulence factors.” We have focused on: 1) identifying relevant datasets and resources; 2) developing a pipeline for analysis of experimental data; and 3) developing flexible tools to integrate information from the biomedical literature. A deeper understanding of virulence mechanisms will make it possible to create improved disease models, to identify countermeasures, and to speed up the “bug-to-drug” pipeline. Our accomplishments include the creation of an international challenge evaluation for text mining in biology (BioCreAtIvE); the creation of an international community focused on text mining tools to support for curation of biological databases; support to DARPA to pitch a BioOntologies program; the award of a grant from NSF; and the publication of 20 peer reviewed papers and book chapters.