Extended deadline. The 4th Workshop on Vaccines and Drug Ontology Studies (VDOS-2015)

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CALL FOR PAPERS
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The 4th International Workshop on Vaccines and Drug Ontology Studies (VDOS-2015)
https://sites.google.com/site/vdosworkshop/vdos2015

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Lisbon, Portugal
July, 2015

Held in conjunction with the 6th International Conference on Biomedical Ontologies (ICBO 2015), Lisbon, Portugal, July 27-30, 2015.
http://icbo2015.fc.ul.pt


EXTENDED VDOS-2015 Workshop Submission Deadline: April 30, 2015

Workshop Theme and Topics

Drugs and vaccines have contributed to dramatic improvements in public health worldwide. Over the last decade, there have been efforts in the biomedical ontology community that represent various areas associated with drugs including vaccines that extend existing health and clinical terminology systems (e.g., SNOMED, RxNorm, NDF- RT, and MedDRA), vernacular medical terminologies, and their applications to research and clinical data. This workshop will provide a platform for discussing innovative solutions as well as the challenges in the development and application of biomedical ontologies to representing and analyzing drugs and vaccines, their administration, immune responses induced, adverse events, and similar topics. The workshop will cover two main areas: (i) ontology representation of drugs (including vaccines), and (ii) applications of the ontologies in real world situations – administration, adverse events, etc. Examples of biomedical subject matter in the scope of this workshop: drug components (e.g., drug active ingredients, vaccine antigens, and adjuvants), administration details (e.g., dosage, administration route, and frequency), gene immune responses and pathways, drug-drug or drug-food interactions, and adverse events. Both research and clinical subjects will be covered. We will also focus on computational methods used to study these, for example, literature mining of vaccine/drug-gene interaction networks, social media text mining, meta-analysis of host immune responses, and time event analysis of the pharmacological effects.

Drugs and vaccines have been critical to prevent and treat human and animal diseases. Work in both (drugs and vaccines) areas is closely related - from preclinical research and development to manufacturing, clinical trials, government approval and regulation, and post-licensure usage surveillance and monitoring. In a broader scope, vaccine is a special type of drug. However, there are many differences between the two - for example, in case of vaccines, dose, time, route, and frequency of administration are generally known quite precisely. But this is not always the case in drugs. Since vaccines are often administered to healthy people to prevent disease, attribution of an adverse event following vaccination is less likely to be confounded by signs or symptoms of underlying disease. However, separation of manifestation of disease from manifestation of drug effect is often very challenging. In the U.S.A, vaccines are regulated under different laws by the Center for Biologics (CBER) at FDA, while drugs are regulated under the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act by the Center for Drugs (CDER) at FDA. Safety surveillance for vaccines is for the most part carried out by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, while for drugs it is carried out by the FDA. Due to these similarities and differences between vaccines and chemical drugs, a closer communication between these two areas is important to create effective ontological frameworks around which we can build comparative and predictive systems for both vaccines and drugs.

Although several related ontologies have been initiated with much progress made in the recent years, we still face many challenges in order to fully and logically represent drugs and vaccines, and efficiently use the ontologies. In the case of ontology representation, no consensuses have been achieved on how to ontologically represent many relevant areas, for example: (i) administration dose, route, and frequency, (ii) how to accurately represent adverse events, (iii) drug-drug interactions, drug-food interactions, etc. (iv) experimental testing and analysis of vaccine/drug-induced immune responses, and (v) the complexity of time constraints for clinical events post vaccination or medication. Meanwhile, it is also a challenge to efficiently apply biomedical ontologies to solve research and clinical problems. For example, is there any advantage in applying ontologies for advanced literature mining in order to discover gene interaction networks underlying protective immunity or adverse events? How to apply ontologies for personalized medicine? How to use ontologies to improve the performance of complex vaccine/drug research and clinical data analysis? This workshop aims to bring together a diverse group of individuals from clinical, research and pharma-biotech areas to identify, propose, and discuss solutions for important research problems in the ontological representation of vaccine and drug information covering development and preparation, administration, mechanisms of action including induced host immune responses, adverse events, etc. This workshop is expected to support the deeper understanding of vaccine and drug mechanisms and effects. More specific topics will be selected based on attendees’ submissions and interests.

Submission Guidelines

For the paper submission, we will allow three submission formats:


·         full research papers (6 pages) format

·         work in progress / late breaking results (2-3 pages), and

·         a statement of interest (one page) for podium presentation.

The paper format will be the same as the format used in ICBO-2015. A  template can be found at:
http://icbo2015.fc.ul.pt/icbo2015template.doc


All the papers will be submitted and handled through Easy Chair. https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=vdos2015


After the full papers are accepted, we will work with the Journal of Biomedical Semantics (JBMS) editors and reviewers to decide which papers will be formally invited for extension to be included in a thematic series in the JBMS journal. All full-length (6 pages) and short-length (2-3 pages) submissions will go through peer reviews by at least two reviewers. The one-page statement-of-interest submissions will be reviewed by the workshop organizers.

Important Dates

·         Individual Workshop Papers Due: April 30, 2015 (Note: This is the extended deadline)

·         Notification of Acceptance: May 25, 2015

·         Camera Ready: May 30, 2015
First Revision due to JBMS: Sept 15, 2015
Organizers

·         Cui Tao, PhD School of Biomedical Informatics, University of Texas, Health Science Center at Houston

·         Luca Toldo, PhD, Information Services Merck

·         Yongqun “Oliver” He, DVM, PhD, Unit for Laboratory Animal Medicine, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Center for Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

·         Sivaram Arabandi, MD, MS Ontopro LLC Houston, TX



Previous Workshops:

  *   Vaccine and Drug Ontology in the Study of Mechanism and Effect (VDOSME 2012): http://kr-med.org/icbofois2012/vdosme/index.htm

  *   Journal of Biomedical Semantics Thematic series on Vaccine and drug ontology in the study of mechanism and effect (VDOSME): http://www.jbiomedsem.com/series/VDOSME

  *   International Workshop on Vaccine and Drug Ontology Studies (VDOS 2013): http://informatics.mayo.edu/CNTRO/index.php/Events/VDOS_2013

  *   JBMS special issue 2013: http://www.jbiomedsem.com/series/VDOSM13

  *   International Workshop on Vaccine and Drug Ontology Studies (VDOS 2014): https://sites.google.com/site/vdosworkshop/vdos2014

  *   Note: the VDOS 2014 special issue in JBMS is coming soon.

Contact

If you have any questions or wish to inquire about the workshop, please contact:

·         Cui Tao: cui.tao@uth.tmc.edu<mailto:cui.tao@uth.tmc.edu>

·         Luca Toldo: Luca.Toldo@merckgroup.com<mailto:Luca.Toldo@merckgroup.com>

·         Yongqun “Oliver” He: yongqunh@med.umich.edu<mailto:yongqunh@med.umich.edu>

·         Sivaram Arabandi:  sivaram.arabandi@gmail.com<mailto:sivaram.arabandi@gmail.com>
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Oliver

On behalf of the VDOS-2015 organization

Yongqun "Oliver" He, DVM, PhD
Associate Professor
Unit for Laboratory Animal Medicine
Department of Microbiology and Immunology
Center for Computational Medicine and Bioinformatics
and Comprehensive Cancer Center
University of Michigan Medical School
Office: A317A, MSRB III, 1150 W. Medical Center Dr.
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
Email: yongqunh@med.umich.edu<mailto:yongqunh@med.umich.edu>
Tel: 734-615-8231 (O)
http://www.hegroup.org/


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