Online platform helps boost nanomaterial development and risk assessment Nanomaterial research data is exploding, which means new technologies and products – as long as data is efficiently harnessed, systemised and analysed. A new suite of nanoinformatics tools organises data in one place, dramatically reducing the cost of nanosafety research and regulation. Industrial Technologies © Anucha Cheechang/Shutterstock.com With over 300 different engineered nanomaterials on the EU market, a significant challenge for industry and regulators is to understand how different one nanomaterial needs to be from another in terms of size, shape and surface chemistry to be classified as distinct nanoforms or as a set of nanoforms, as defined under the European chemical legislation REACH Their surface properties are highly associated with their toxicity. Hazard and risk evaluation are essential to confidently tap into their full potential and counter public concerns regarding the safety of nanotechnology products. So far, nanosafety research data has been fragmented and inaccessible, largely impeding the development and assessment of new, safer materials. Integrated approach to nanomaterial testing and assessment Iseult Lynch, professor at the University of Birmingham and coordinator of the EU-funded NanoCommons project, states: “The nanotechnology safety field, and the European open knowledge economy, requires the conversion of scientific discoveries into legislative frameworks and industrial applications for safe(r)-by-design materials. This can only be achieved through concerted efforts to integrate, annotate and facilitate access to, and reuse of, the currently disparate and poorly accessible datasets on nanomaterials fate and toxicity on humans and the environment.” To address this gap, NanoCommons developed and implemented a knowledge infrastructure facilitating the harmonisation of nanoinformatics methods and data for modelling, safe-by-design product development and regulatory approval. NanoCommons’ nanoinformatics tools provide services and, importantly, ideas, concepts and workflows that integrate in chemico, in vitro and in silico experiments spanning the following four areas: experimental workflow design and implementation, data processing and analysis, data visualisation and predictive toxicity, and data storage and online accessibility. These predictive models will help to replace the costly animal experiments that are currently a central part of chemicals risk assessment and regulation. Besides making both data and nanoinformatics approaches accessible to a wider research community, NanoCommons achieved a mentality shift in how data is managed and shared, how analysis and modelling tools are used and how collaborative research is performed. Amongst the most important concepts introduced is that of on-the-fly data management, where data is reported at the time it is produced in a structured and harmonised manner. “A key concept developed in NanoCommons is that of the data shepherd. Their role is to ‘herd’ the data from the conception point through its deposition in a findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (and ideally open) repository along with all necessary metadata to allow its reuse,” remarks Lynch. All NanoCommons services and corresponding training materials are found at: (i) Knowledge Base, (ii) User Guidance Handbook, (iii) tools/services and (iv) training materials. Knowledge exchange and content update of each of these resources are conducted by follow-up projects, such as NanoSolveIT and WorldFAIR. Facilitating the search for nanomaterials NanoCommons also developed and published the concept of an extension of the IUPAC International Chemical Identifier (InChI) to nanomaterials, also called NInChI. The first implementation prototype of this new structural representation of nanomaterials encodes the chemical composition, size, morphology, crystallinity and chirality of several nanomaterials, while also characterising complex core-shell structures. Lynch summarises the scientific issues rendering nanomaterial development challenging but also extremely important: “Nanomaterials are defined not only by their unique atom arrangement but also by their physicochemical properties. The latter partly depend on the environment and are most often ensemble averages. Therefore, the NInChI identifier currently represents the state-of-the-art in nanomaterials harmonisation, enabling users to uniquely refer to specific nanomaterials and compare different nanomaterials. The NInChI should be used as a persistent identifier for nanomaterials in publications, databases and models.” Keywords NanoCommons, nanoinformatics, nanomaterial development, nanosafety, predictive toxicity, International Chemical Identifier, InChI
