Abstract
The Internet, a web of information in all corners of the planet earth from all nations, cities, universities, companies, and governments is full of billions of web pages. But who has the time, even to search for one site and then peruse it for some use? The real value of any site is what we want to use it for including news, shopping, information on various aspects of life and information for our own jobs. Thus, we do have to use it occasionally and should. For our own fields of toxicology, pathology and medical research, it provides a huge amount of information that we can use often for free. Sometimes, we hit a web site so good or unique that it seems impossible to believe that it exists. Can some one person or organization actually spend the time and effort to produce this extraordinary web site? Such may be the case for some of the sites I will discuss today.
For modern day drug discovery and development, what can be more valuable than the genomes of humans, rodents and other animals? Information on genes and their protein products can lead us to more effective therapies for human and animal diseases. If you are not so sure of your knowledge of genetics and other aspects of molecular biology, please do not worry. Try the NIH Human Genome site for a web course on genetics, bioinformatics, genetic diseases and the genome with links to a huge amount of information on genes and proteins—〈http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/HumanGenome/posters/chromosome/index.shtml〉. To browse a genome (including humans, chimps, macaques, chickens, mice, rats, dogs, cattle) try 〈http://www.ensembl.org/index.html〉. Specific more specialized sites for each species can also be found by web searches including rats 〈http://rgd.mcw.edu/〉 and mice 〈http://www.informatics.jax.org/; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/guide/mouse/〉. For comparative mouse genomics in the environmental genome center at NIEHS, try http://www.niehs.nih.gov/cmgcc/home.htm. The NCI cancer genome anatomy project 〈http://cgap.nci.nih.gov/〉 provides a wealth of information.
Veterinary Pathology and histology image databases (with images of varying quality) are found in several nations, including Cornell’s John King’s Necropsy Show & Tell 〈 http://w3.vet.cornell.edu/nst/〉, the Cornell Huxtable-Summers-deLahunta Atlas of Veterinary Neuropathology 〈http://web.vet.cornell.edu/public/oed/neuropathology/index.asp〉, Veterinary pathology teaching tutorials 〈http://www.bris.ac.uk/vetpath/cpl/tut.html〉. For toxicologic pathology, Bob Maronpot and staff have prepared several atlases (CDs and online) on the NIEHS web site, also noted in reviews in a recent Toxicologic Pathology issue including mouse liver 〈http://dir.niehs.nih.gov/dirlep/liver2/mice.htm〉, and also on rat liver and genetically-engineered mice 〈http://dir.niehs.nih.gov/dirlep/genmice2/openme.htm〉. PathBase 〈http://www.pathbase.net/〉, is a mouse pathology work in progress, by the European PathBase Consortium. The Allen Mouse Brain Atlas 〈http://www.brainatlas.org/default.asp〉, Gene paint for mouse gene expression patterns 〈http://genepaint.org/〉, a mouse histology site 〈http://www.deltagen.com/target/histologyatlas/HistologyAtlas.html〉, The Jackson Laboratory Mouse Tumor Biology Database 〈http://tumor.informatics.jax.org/mtbwi/index.do〉, has histopathology and immunohistochemistry images and literature on mice. In fact, the entire Jackson Laboratory site is a wealth of information on mice 〈http://www.jax.org/〉. Human pathology image databases are more abundant 〈http://gethelp.library.upenn.edu/workshops/biomed/ppt/medicalimages.html〉 and include gross and microscopic images of almost every disease. CDC has a Public Health Image Library 〈http://phil.cdc.gov/Phil/home.asp〉.
Most all journal’s online sites require a subscription or access via your employer’s library. There are now many free online open access journals due to a push by NIH and other critics of the publication system for the free access to publications of government sponsored research. They provide free access to pdf files of the most recent publications or publications published 1 year ago or older. These including the Japanese Journal of Toxicologic Pathology 〈http://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/browse/tox/char/en〉, CDC’s Emerging Infectious Diseases 〈http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/index.htm〉, pubmed central with over 50 journals 〈http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/〉 including a series of BioMed central (BMC) journals and several as the Public Library of Science (PLoS) journals in many fields of medicine. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, offers its entire collection from 1915 online free 〈http://www.pnas.org/contents-by-date.0.shtml〉.
Many lectures in the form of text and powerpoint files and even audio and video files can be found. Examples include lectures at a FDA Hepatotoxicity Steering Group Meeting, http://www.fda.gov/cder/livertox/presentations2004.htm; a course in toxicology at a university, with audio and video, http://www.agls.uidaho.edu/etoxweb/lectures/lectures.htm and our own STP members presentations on pathology for non-pathologists to regulatory staff at FDA last year 〈http://www.toxpath.org/AM2005/621session/workshp.asp〉 for STP members only on our STP web site〉.
Major documents and information pages on the web include EPA’s Guidelines for Carcinogen Risk Assessment 〈http://cfpub.epa.gov/ncea/cfm/recordisplay.cfm?deid=116283〉, FDA CDER guidance documents 〈http://www.fda.gov/cder/guidance/index.htm〉, NIH funding opportunities (http://grants1.nih.gov/grants/guide/index.html), NCI Cancer databases 〈http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/cancerdatabase〉, drug information 〈http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/druginformation.html〉.
Virtual slide sites are appearing and some are quite nice. The Virtual Slidebox has many human and animal slides 〈http://www.path.uiowa.edu/virtualslidebox/〉, and the UC Davis site run by Bob Cardiff and Jose Galvez, has many slides of human cancers and mouse models of human cancer http://imagearchive.compmed.ucdavis.edu/.
If readers know of some other outstanding other database or information sites for use by toxicologic pathologists, please email to me.