In vitro toxicity testing at massive scale in diverse primary human cells

Ended Project Grant Awarded Last action

Award ID
R44ES032515
Recipient
Awarding agency
Obligated
$4,244,431

Award facts

Assistance listing
93.113 Environmental Health
Completion date
Originally
Funding
  • $3,433,058.08 Federal
  • $811,373.00 Non-federal
Place of performance
California, USA

Award details come from USAspending.gov.

Description

Abstract
Coral genomics is combining whole genome sequencing and RNA profiling in cell- based functional assays to predict human variation in the metabolism and toxicity of compounds encountered in therapeutic and environmental exposures. RNA profiling before and after exposure provides a high-dimensional representation of changes in cell function, and the use of rapid, cost-effective profiling could enable toxicity testing in large, diverse panels of human cells. Thus, to address the need for toxicity testing that better reflects the genetic diversity of human populations, coral developed innovative approaches to reduce the cost and increase the speed of high-throughput sequencing assays. In a successful phase i sbir (R43 HG010445), coral established protocols for cost-effective sample multiplexing for rapid shallow sequencing of samples, developed a RE-indexing workflow to pool samples into a single sequencing run, and combined streamlined sequencing solutions with novel functional assays and algorithms to improve the performance of polygenic risk scores (PRS). In a collaboration with the US food and drug administration (FDA), coral applied these techniques to predict patient-specific hepatocyte response profiles to acetaminophen (n = 200) and found significant interindividual variability in toxicity. Importantly, the findings show that a patient's genotype predicts a significant portion (AUC = 0.85) of the interindividual variation, indicating the approach is sensitive to genetic diversity. Preliminary findings indicate coral's approach may be a sensitive means for identifying differences in toxic responses to compounds across diverse populations. Further development and testing across multiple compounds in a large, diverse sample has the potential to provide a scalable, high-throughput platform for effective toxicity testing that is more representative of the diversity of human responses. Coral proposes a direct to phase II sbir in response to niehs's RFA-ES-20-208 to evaluate these methods in three cell models and advance at least one model to full-scale testing with 250 patient samples and 100 compounds with known toxicity profiles. Aim 1. Characterize the interindividual variability of RNA profile shifts in three human cell models (i.e., immune, hepatocyte, and embryoid body) exposed to ten compounds with known toxicity profiles. Select milestones: 1) 4,500 response profiles; 2) statistical significance of intraindividual variability VS. Interindividual variability (p 0.3 for faers profile and AUC > 0.85 for TOX21 dataset. Aim 2. Using the most predictive cell model, characterize interindividual variability of sublethal cytotoxic responses to 100 compounds with known toxicity profiles to develop a robust model for predicting systemic toxicity. Select milestones: 1) 75,000 response profiles; 2) identification of = 5 compounds with high population level variability in toxicity (1-50TH percentile variation >10); 3) R2 > 0.4 using chemical and transcriptional data to predict faers profile; 5) R2 at predicting toxicity profile of an individual across 100 compounds > 0.5.

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Quick answers

Who received award R44ES032515?

R44ES032515 was awarded to Gordian Biotechnology, Inc. by National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (National Institutes of Health) on February 1, 2021.

How much is award R44ES032515 worth?

$4,244,431 has been obligated on R44ES032515: $3,433,058 in federal funding and $811,373 in non-federal funding.

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