https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/go/928061

ICE Tools Updates

The NTP's Integrated Chemical Environment (ICE) provides data and tools to help develop, assess, and interpret chemical safety tests. Updates to ICE during 2020 and 2021 launched several new tools and implemented substantive updates to existing tools.

  • The Search tool now allows search results to be sent directly to other ICE tools, the EPA CompTox Chemicals Dashboard, and the NTP Chemical Effects in Biological Systems database. Visualization features implemented in March 2021 help users explore query results in more detail.
  • Improvements to the IVIVE tool allowed users the option to upload their own in vitro data for IVIVE analysis and their own in vivo data for visualizing comparisons to IVIVE predictions, as opposed to being limited to using data available in ICE. An inhalation model was added to the IVIVE tool in October 2020. The tool now also allows assay selection based on mode of action and user specification of whether experimental or predicted data are used for ADME parameters. Results can also be filtered by mode of action or toxicity endpoint annotation.
  • New visualization features in the Chemical Characterization tool help users better understand the relationships between members of a chemical set and lets users explore chemical use categories from the EPA’s Consumer Products database.
  • Curve Surfer, launched in March 2021, allows users to view and interact with concentration–response curves from curated HTS data.
  • The PBPK tool, launched in March 2021, uses models from the EPA’s httk package to generate predictions of tissue-specific chemical concentration profiles following a dosing event.
  • Chemical Quest, launched in June 2021, uses Saagar molecular fingerprints (Sedykh et al. 2021) to identify chemicals in the ICE database having similar structures to a query chemical, which can be entered using chemical identifiers or structure drawings.

Improvements to all tools during 2020 and 2021 include organization of data from the EPA ToxCast and the U.S. government’s interagency Tox21 programs into query setup menus based on mechanistic targets and modes of action. Other improvements included mapping of ToxCast and Tox21 assays to controlled terms from the NCI Metathesaurus; new tooltips and information buttons to help users set up queries; and the acceptance of a variety of chemical identifier types as query inputs.