So to profile these two different concepts against each other once again.
The adverse outcome pathway concept is something which is at the moment very much
on the level of textbook knowledge.
It is actually the best organized textbook of toxicology, but it is narrative.
It is describing with a low level of detail what is happening
in order to make toxic effects happen.
It is completely based on existing information.
So, it is organizing our scientific literature by experts.
And, for this reason, it is biased by existing knowledge.
Because a lot of our literature is simply wrong, it is not reproducible and
it requires a lot of sorting to understand what is the high quality and
what is the low quality.
Because of this nature, it is also not quantitative, or
typically not quantitative.
It does normally not discuss the flux of the system,
the dynamics, the system's aspects of the toxicology.
And there's not yet any agreement on how to quality assure this,
how to validate an adverse outcome pathway.
The pathways of toxicity as proposed in Human Toxome project are different,
they are molecular.
We're describing the gene changes,
we're describing the metabolites which are increasing and decreasing.
And a lot of these is based on Omics technology so
its emerging information which is experimentally produced.
And it is in many aspects untargeted.
It does not come with the hypothesis, I want to measure gene X or
metabolite epsilon.
It is just describing what is happening in the meaningful system.
And it is the causality we prove, that a gene change is actually impacting
on the outcome, which is then making it acceptable knowledge.