Researchers at Lund University in Sweden are using Qlucore's advanced data analysis software to conduct new gene-expression studies related to the prediction of sensitisation.
Their research will help to support Sens-it-iv, a European Union-funded project that aims to develop and optimise in-vitro test strategies that could reduce or replace animal testing for sensitisation studies.
A procedure performed in vitro is performed in a controlled clinical environment, rather than in a living organism.
The aim of the Sens-it-iv project is to develop in-vitro alternatives to animal tests currently used for the risk assessment of potential skin or lung sensitisers, as there are not yet any in-vitro tests or test strategies available to test chemical compounds for their potential to induce hypersensitivity reactions.
As a result, in industries such as cosmetics, animal testing has traditionally been used to address the risk of producing products that contain skin (contact) sensitisers.
Prof Carl Borrebaeck of the Department of Immunotechnology at Lund University, said: 'Worldwide, more and more people are suffering from hypersensitivity reactions, such as allergies, which means that this area has become an important health concern.
'As a scientist, I am interested to find out why otherwise-harmless compounds can often elicit an adverse immune response in humans - and gene expression studies could provide us with some important insights in this area, while also providing a viable alternative to animal testing,' he added.
Adverse reactions to sensitising agents are steadily increasing, and much of the risk assessment for potential skin or lung sensitisers still depends on animal testing.
The overall objective of Sens-it-iv is to produce in-vitro alternatives for these assays and develop them up to the level of pre-validation.
Besides reducing animal experimentation, an increase in the accuracy of predicting sensitising potencies is also expected.
To achieve this goal, the Sens-it-iv project will consider the impact of various compounds on cellular-molecular interactions, which play a central role in the development and elicitation of many allergies.
Borrebaeck, a sub-coordinator of Sens-it-iv, and Dr Ann-Sofie Albrekt are both using Qlucore Omics Explorer in order to get the maximum value out of the data being produced by research in this area.
Gene-expression studies such as these are proving invaluable to the study of allergens; however, a large amount of data are produced by these experiments.
As a result, it is impossible to derive any real biological meaning from these findings unless sophisticated data algorithms are used to help interpret this data effectively.
This is a new challenge compared to just 10 years ago, when researchers were only able to work with analysis methods that provided information about single genes.
As a result of this change, most of the software that has been designed for use with gene-expression experiments has mainly focused on the ability to handle increasingly vast amounts of data, which means that the role of the scientist/researcher has been largely set aside.
Qlucore Omics Explorer is now being used to transform high-dimensional data down to lower dimensions and apply powerful statistical methods, which can then be plotted in three dimensions on a computer screen and rotated, so that results can be examined and analysed by the naked eye.
With this approach, the view of the data can be changed in an instant, so that researchers studying the impact of various compounds on cellular-molecular interactions are only looking at the specific sub-group that interests them at any given moment.
In addition, it is easy to add and/or remove data as necessary, without having to start from the beginning and re-analyse the entire dataset.
