path: root/paper/loael.md

---
author: |
    Christoph Helma^1^, David Vorgrimmler^1^, Denis Gebele^1^, Martin Gütlein^2^, Benoit Schilter^3^, Elena Lo Piparo^3^
title: |
    Modeling Chronic Toxicity: A comparison of experimental variability with read across predictions
include-before: ^1^ in silico toxicology gmbh,  Basel, Switzerland\newline^2^ Inst. f. Computer Science, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Germany\newline^3^ Chemical Food Safety Group, Nestlé Research Center, Lausanne, Switzerland
keywords: (Q)SAR, read-across, LOAEL
date: \today
abstract: " "
documentclass: achemso
bibliography: references.bib
bibliographystyle: achemso
biblio-style: achemso
output:
  pdf_document:
    fig_caption: yes
...

Introduction
============

Christoph + Elena + Benoit

The main objectives of this study are

-   to investigate the experimental variability of LOAEL data

-   develop predictive model for lowest observed effect levels

-   compare the performance of model predictions with experimental
    variability

Materials and Methods
=====================

Datasets
--------

### Mazzatorta dataset

Just referred to the paper 2008.

### Swiss Federal Office dataset

Elena + Swiss Federal Office contribution (input)

Only rat LOAEL values were used for the current investigation, because
they correspond directly to the Mazzatorta dataset.

### Preprocessing

Christoph

Chemical structures in both datasets are represented as SMILES strings
(Weininger 1988). Syntactically incorrect and missing SMILES were
generated from other identifiers (e.g names, CAS numbers) when possible.
Studies with undefined (“0”) or empty LOAEL entries were removed for
this study.

Algorithms
----------

Christoph

For this study we are using the modular lazar (*la*zy *s*tructure
*a*ctivity *r*elationships) framework (Maunz et al. 2013) for model
development and validation.

lazar follows the following basic workflow: For a given chemical
structure it searches in a database for similar structures (neighbors)
with experimental data, builds a local (Q)SAR model with these neighbors
and uses this model to predict the unknown activity of the query
compound. This procedure resembles an automated version of *read across*
predictions in toxicology, in machine learning terms it would be
classified as a *k-nearest-neighbor* algorithm.

Apart from this basic workflow lazar is completely modular and allows
the researcher to use any algorithm for neighbor identification and
local (Q)SAR modelling. Within this study we are using the following
algorithms:

### Neighbor identification

Christoph

Similarity calculations are based on MolPrint2D fingerprints (Bender et
al. 2004) from the OpenBabel chemoinformatics library (OBoyle et al.
2011).

The MolPrint2D fingerprint uses atom environments as molecular
representation, which resemble basically the chemical concept of
functional groups. For each atom in a molecule it represents the
chemical environment with the atom types of connected atoms.

The main advantage of MolPrint2D fingerprints over fingerprints with
predefined substructures (such as OpenBabel FP3, FP4 or MACCs
fingerprints) is that it may capture substructures of toxicological
relevance that are not included in predefined substructure lists.
Preliminary experiments have shown that predictions with MolPrint2D
fingerprints are indeed more accurate than fingerprints with predefined
substructures.

From MolPrint2D fingerprints we can construct a feature vector with all
atom environments of a compound, which can be used to calculate chemical
similarities.

[//]: # https://openbabel.org/docs/dev/FileFormats/MolPrint2D_format.html#molprint2d-format

The chemical similarity between two compounds is expressed as the
proportion between atom environments common in both structures and the
total number of atom environments (Jaccard/Tanimoto index, [@eq:jaccard]).

$$ sim = \frac{|A \cap B|}{|A \cup B|} $$ {#eq:jaccard}

$A$ atom environments of compound A, $B$ atom environments of compound B.

### Local (Q)SAR models

Christoph

As soon as neighbors for a query compound have been identified, we can
use their experimental LOAEL values to predict the activity of the
untested compound. In this case we are using the weighted mean of the
neighbors LOAEL values, where the contribution of each neighbor is
weighted by its similarity to the query compound.

### Validation

Christoph

Results
=======

### Dataset comparison

Christoph + Elena

The main objective of this section is to compare the content of both
databases in terms of structural composition and LOAEL values, to
estimate the experimental variability of LOAEL values and to establish a
baseline for evaluating prediction performance.

#### Applicability domain

##### Ches-Mapper analysis

Martin

CheS-Mapper (Chemical Space Mapping and Visualization in 3D,
http://ches-mapper.org/, (Gutlein, Karwath, and Kramer 2012)) can be
used to analyze the relationship between the structure of chemical
compounds, their physico-chemical properties, and biological or toxic
effects. CheS-Mapper embeds a dataset into 3D space, such that compounds
with similar feature values are close to each other. The following two
screenshots visualise the comparison. The datasets are embeded into 3D
Space based on structural fragments from three Smart list (OpenBabel
FP3, OpenBabel FP4 and OpenBabel MACCS).

##### Distribution of functional groups

Christoph

[@fig:fg] shows the frequency of selected functional groups in both
datasets. A complete table for 138 functional groups from OpenBabel FP4
fingerprints can be found in the appendix.

![Frequency of functional groups.](functional-groups.pdf){#fig:fg}

### Experimental variability versus prediction uncertainty 



Christoph

Duplicated LOAEL values can be found in both datasets and there is a
substantial overlap of compounds, with LOAEL values in both datasets.

##### Intra dataset variability

The Mazzatorta dataset has 562 LOAEL values with 439 unique structures,
the Swiss Federal Office dataset has 493 rat LOAEL values with 381
unique structures. [@fig:intra] shows the intra-dataset variability, where
each vertical line represents a single compound and each dot represents
an individual LOAEL value. The experimental variance of LOAEL values is
similar in both datasets (p-value: 0.48).

[//]: # p-value: 0.4750771581019402

![Intra dataset variability: Each vertical line represents a compound, dots are individual LOAEL values.](loael-dataset-comparison-all-compounds.pdf){#fig:intra}

##### Inter dataset variability

[@fig:inter] shows the same situation for the combination of the Mazzatorta
and Swiss Federal Office datasets. Obviously the experimental
variability is larger than for individual datasets.

![Inter dataset variability](loael-dataset-comparison-common-compounds.pdf){#fig:inter}

##### LOAEL correlation between datasets

[@fig:corr-1] depicts the correlation between LOAEL data from both datasets
(using means for multiple measurements).
Identical values were removed from analysis.

[//]: #   MAE: 0.801626064534318
[//]: # with identical values


```
## Loading required package: methods
```

![Correlation of dataset medians (-log10(LOAEL [mmol/kg_bw])](figure/unnamed-chunk-2-1.png)

Correlation analysis shows a
significant correlation (p-value < 2.2e-16) with r\^2: 0.55, RMSE: 1.34

### Local (Q)SAR models

Christoph

In order to compare the perfomance of in silico models with experimental variability we are using compounds that occur in both datasets as a test set (155 compounds, -1 measurements).

The Mazzatorta, the Swiss Federal Office dataset and a combined dataset were used as training data. Predictions for the test set compounds were made after eliminating all information from the test compound from the corresponding training dataset. [@tbl:common-pred] summarizes the results:


Training data | Model prediction | Experimental variability
--------------|------------------|-------------------------
Mazzatorta | 0.88  | 0.87
Swiss Federal Office |0.65  | 0.76
Commmon | 1.28| 0.8314774
Combined | | 0.8242536

: Comparison of model predictions with experimental variability. {#tbl:common-pred}


Traditional 10-fold cross-validation results are summarised in [@tbl:cv]:

Training dataset | $r^2$ | RMSE | MAE
-----------------|-------|------|----
Mazzatorta | 0.37  | 0.84| 0.65
Swiss Federal Office | 0.25  | 0.75| 0.61
Combined | 0.12  | 1.45| 1.21

: 10-fold crossvalidation results {#tbl:cv}

[//]: # ```{r fig.cap="Comparison of predictions with measured values (-log10(LOAEL [mmol/kg_bw])", fig.lp="fig:", echo=F}


```
## Warning in file(file, "rt"): cannot open file 'data/common-test.csv': No
## such file or directory
```

```
## Error in file(file, "rt"): cannot open the connection
```

```
## Error in log10(data$LOAEL): non-numeric argument to mathematical function
```

```
## Error in ggplot(sorted, aes(SMILES, -log10(LOAEL), ymin = min(-log10(LOAEL)), : object 'sorted' not found
```

Discussion
==========

### Elena + Benoit

### 

Summary
=======

References
==========

Bender, Andreas, Hamse Y. Mussa, and Robert C. Glen, and Stephan
Reiling. 2004. “Molecular Similarity Searching Using Atom Environments,
Information-Based Feature Selection, and a Naïve Bayesian Classifier.”
*Journal of Chemical Information and Computer Sciences* 44 (1): 170–78.
doi:[10.1021/ci034207y](https://doi.org/10.1021/ci034207y).

Gütlein, Martin, Andreas Karwath, and Stefan Kramer. 2012. “CheS-Mapper
- Chemical Space Mapping and Visualization in 3D.” *Journal of
Cheminformatics* 4 (1): 7.
doi:[10.1186/1758-2946-4-7](https://doi.org/10.1186/1758-2946-4-7).

Maunz, Andreas, Martin Gütlein, Micha Rautenberg, David Vorgrimmler,
Denis Gebele, and Christoph Helma. 2013. “Lazar: A Modular Predictive
Toxicology Framework.” *Frontiers in Pharmacology* 4. Frontiers Media
SA.
doi:[10.3389/fphar.2013.00038](https://doi.org/10.3389/fphar.2013.00038).

OBoyle, Noel M, Michael Banck, Craig A James, Chris Morley, Tim
Vandermeersch, and Geoffrey R Hutchison. 2011. “Open Babel: An Open
Chemical Toolbox.” *Journal of Cheminformatics* 3 (1). Springer Science;
Business Media: 33.
doi:[10.1186/1758-2946-3-33](https://doi.org/10.1186/1758-2946-3-33).

Weininger, David. 1988. “SMILES, a Chemical Language and Information
System. 1. Introduction to Methodology and Encoding Rules.” *Journal of
Chemical Information and Computer Sciences* 28 (1): 31–36.
doi:[10.1021/ci00057a005](https://doi.org/10.1021/ci00057a005).