Exploration Using Signatures in Annotation Graph Datasets
than the less expensive Bevacizumab. Both drugs aremonoclonal antibodies ( mab) that target specific molecules
The widespread development and adoption of ontologies to
or organisms. In 2008, Bevacizumab cost Medicare $20
capture semantic domain knowledge and the growth of an-
million for about 480,000 injections, while Ranibizumab
notation graph datasets has created many opportunities for
cost $537 million for 337,000 injections. Several studies
have shown no superior effect of Ranibizumab over
Ontologies are developed by domain experts to capture
Bevacizumab for the treatment of macular degeneration.
knowledge specific to some domain. The biomedical com-
Our research addresses the challenge of large scale Linked
munity has taken the lead in these activities. Every model
Data analytics of annotation graph datasets, using semantic
organism database has genes and proteins that are widely
knowledge from ontologies. We define an Annotation Signa-
annotated, e.g., with controlled vocabulary (CV) terms from
ture between a pair of scientific concepts, e.g., a pair of drugs
the Gene Ontology (GO). The NCI Thesaurus (NCIt) ver-
or a pair of genes. The annotation signature builds upon the
sion 12.05d has 93,788 terms and the LinkedCT dataset of
shared annotations or shared CV terms between the pair of
clinical trial results circa September 2011 includes 142,207
concepts. The signature further makes use of knowledge in
drugs or interventions, 167,012 conditions or diseases, and
the ontology to determine the ontological relatedness of the
166,890 links to DBPedia, DrugBank and Diseasome. At the
shared CV terms. The annotation signature is represented
opposite end of the domain spectrum, the Financial Indus-
by N groups (clusters) of ontologically related shared CV
try Business Ontology (FIBO) captures knowledge about the
terms. For example, the annotation signature for a (drug,
structure, properties and behavior of financial contracts.
drug) pair will be a set of N clusters, where each cluster
LinkedData and the Linked Open Data cloud (LOD cloud)
includes a group of ontologically related disease terms.
has also made available many annotation graph datasets
We define the Annotation Signature problem of creat-
where scientific concepts such as genes, drugs and diseases
ing a many-to-many partitioning of the edges of a bipartite
are marked up (annotated) with controlled vocabulary terms
graph between two sets of annotations (Palma et al. 2013a;
(CV terms) from ontologies. The challenge is to explore
2013b). We then summarize the challenges in exploiting do-
these rich and complex annotated datasets, together with the
main specific semantic knowledge, including the ontology
domain semantics captured within ontologies, to discover
structure and relationship types between concepts. We show
patterns of annotations across multiple concepts that may
how we can tune the (ontologically related) similarity score
lead to potential discoveries. For genes, these patterns may
between node pairs, and produce clusters of more closely
involve cross-genome functional annotation, e.g., combining
related terms that are more useful to the domain scientist.
the GO functional annotations of two model organisms such
This research was partially supported by NSF award
as Arabidopsis thaliana (a plant) and C. elegans (a nematode
DBI1147144. We thank our collaborators: Eric Haag and
or worm), to predict new gene functions or interactions.
Heven Sze, University of Maryland; Gilberto Fragoso and
Drug target prediction, with a goal of finding new targets
Sherri De Coronado, National Cancer Institute; Guoqian
for existing drugs, has received widespread media attention
and has resulted in some notable successes, e.g., Viagra. Beyond drug target prediction, there are many applications
where one may need to provide a comprehensive report of all
Palma, G.; Vidal, M.-E.; ; Raschid, L.; and Thor, A. 2013a.
known evidence about a pair or family of drugs, e.g., to make
Annsigclustering: A semantic-driven clustering technique
clinical policy recommendations. The New York Times re-
for annotated linked data. In Proceedings of the LIS Work-
ported on November 3, 2010 that Genentech began offering
secret rebates to about 300 ophthalmologists in an apparentinducement to get them to use more Ranibizumab rather
Palma, G.; Vidal, M.-E.; Haag, E.; Raschid, L.; and Thor,A. 2013b. Measuring relatedness between scientific enti-
Copyright c 2013, Association for the Advancement of Artificial
ties in annotation datasets. In Proceedings of the ACM BCB
Intelligence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved.
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