| Responsible Department | Department of Basic Science and Environment
0 % NERI, Aarhus University 100 % | ||||||||
| Research School | Environmental Chemistry, Microbiology and Toxicology (RECETO) | ||||||||
| Course Dates | August 23rd 2011 | ||||||||
| Course Abstract | Within the CAESAR EU project (http://www.caesar-project.eu) specific in-silico models have been developed to predict the biological activity of chemicals for legislative purposes. This course provides a practical overview of QSAR models and predictive software in general. The platform VEGA, developed in collab. with the US EPA and other regulatory bodies, will be also introduced. It makes available CAESAR models and others, visualizing the results, providing a measurement of model reliability. | ||||||||
| Course Home Page | http://www.receto.dk | ||||||||
| Course Registration | By email to elena.boriani@marionegri.it | ||||||||
| Deadline for Registration | July 20th 2011. | ||||||||
| Credits | 1 (ECTS) To achieve credits a written assignment must be handed in. | ||||||||
| Level of Course | PhD course Also open for interesed master students, post docs, regulators etc. | ||||||||
| Organisation of Teaching | Participants have to bring their own laptop to the course. The course will be held at the Faculty of Life Sciences at Copenhagen University. Room A1-02.01 on Nordre Sti, Frederiksberg Campus. | ||||||||
| Language of Instruction | English | ||||||||
| Restrictions | A max of 15 participants will be accepted. | ||||||||
| Course Content | |||||||||
| Different possible uses of QSAR for risk assessment and legislations (e.g. registration, classification and labelling, prioritisation). Introduction to the approach given by legislations (e.g. REACH) on the QSAR methods. Introduction to the CAESAR QSAR methods and new free platform VEGA for QSAR modeling. Presentation of the five endpoints in CAESAR: Carcinogenicity/BCF/mutagenicity/skin sensitization/reproductive toxicity. Results from the validation sets for these models will be shown, and how to use them. The tool for the evaluation of the applicability domain available within CAESAR will be introduced. The evaluation will be addressed according to the OECD principles: accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, false positives and false negatives. Pitfalls of the QSAR methods will be shown, discussing when not to use the models, and how to take advantage of different models. Participants will use the models themselves, through a series of different exercises. Participants can actively participate also using own data as case studies. The advantages and disadvantages of the different QSAR methodologies will be discussed. Comparison within experimental values /other software results. Understanding the meaning behind a QSAR approach. | |||||||||
| Teaching and learning Methods | |||||||||
| Participants have to bring their own laptop to the course. The teaching will be lectures and exercises. | |||||||||
| Learning Outcome | |||||||||
| The course will provide examples and guidance on the practical use of particularly QSAR, for assessing chemical properties and toxicity data for compounds. CAESAR models will be tested and results will be critically discussed. The course is not aiming to teach all QSAR features but recommended practices to deal with QSAR methods in a critical way. Participants will learn how to use QSAR models, what can be obtained and what it cannot. After the course students will be able to perform their own calculations using the user friendly, freely available CAESAR models. They will also be able to interpret the obtained results. | |||||||||
| Course Material | |||||||||
| Re-prints of relevant published articles, handouts of lecture slides and other course materials including files of the calculated examples and interesting and useful links. | |||||||||
| Course Coordinator | |||||||||
| Ditte Horsted Carlsen, dittec@life.ku.dk, Department of Basic Sciences and Environment/IGM Administration, Phone: 353-32695 | |||||||||
| Other Lecturers | |||||||||
| Dr. Elena Boriani (elena.boriani@marionegri.it) | |||||||||
| Course Costs | |||||||||
| None. | |||||||||
| Type of Evaluation | |||||||||
| 1 ECTS is available for students who perform a written assignment after the course (~25 hours work load). The assignment will consist of a small report including analysis using the methodology from the course. The analysis may be performed on own data or examples provided by the teacher. To be approved the assignment must show a good level of comprehension of the explained topics. | |||||||||
| Work Load | |||||||||
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