Panuwat Trairatphisan, Researcher at AbbVie, envisions eTRANSAFE as the next generation of integrative data storage and analyses platform to tackle the challenges in translational predictions of drug toxicity
What is your current role in eTRANSAFE?
I’m currently the AbbVie representative for WP3 and WP7. My main role is to facilitate pre-clinical data donation from my organization and to support the data analyses and related activities for biomarker discovery. I’m also responsible for identifying use cases from applying the shared data and tools from the consortium to support drug safety assessment of internal projects.
What is your overall vision of the project?
I envision eTRANSAFE as a one-stop comprehensive platform for translational drug safety assessment. There exist already many drug safety/toxicity databases and analytical platforms which were separately developed. This posts a major challenge on data integration and data interoperability while this issue could be addressed by eTRANSAFE as the two key elements are developed together. Besides, eTRANSAFE aims to improve translational analyses and prediction of drug-induced organ toxicity which still remain a major knowledge gap within the scientific community. Thus, I also foresee eTRANSAFE as an innovative analytical platform that integrate both pre-clinical and clinical data to address this particular challenge.
What do you find most challenging about the project?
On the one hand, data gathering from different pharmaceutical partners remain a challenge due to the strict regulations from each organization. This results in a lower number of sharable data to be further analysed within the project which might further affect the confidence levels of results. On the other hand, translational safety assessment requires a deep understanding of complex biological systems and their interconnections in each species. A (big) data-driven approach implemented within eTRANSAFE is yet to be explored whether it would be well-suited to unravel such complexities.
What represents eTRANSAFE for your personal career?
Solving tasks and connecting to colleagues within the eTRANSAFE consortium opens up opportunities to acquire new expertise for my career. Facilitate data sharing from my organization allows me to learn the scientific and legal approval processes, and to also be more critical on protecting proprietary and personal-identifiable information. Besides, having discussions with eTRANSAFE colleagues and applying consortium tools to internal projects help me to identify knowledge gaps in the field of drug safety assessment that I still need to catch up in my professional development. Therefore, eTRANSAFE is a great place to learn new skills and make connections among the drug safety community.
*The provided commentaries are based on the interviewee’s personal opinions towards the consortium which do not reflect the views from AbbVie as an organization.”