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|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1650/smbm16Furlong.pdf
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https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-1650/smbm16Furlong.pdf
Structuring Knowledge on Human Diseases:
Challenges and Opportunities
Laura I. Furlong
Research Programme on Biomedical Informatics
Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Barcelona, Spain
laura.furlong@upf.edu
Abstract biomedical literature; b) network biology for the
study of human diseases and drug toxicity; c)
Recent technological breakthroughs are produc-
bionformatic approaches for the reuse of clinical
ing an unprecedented volume of data on the ge-
data for research. Her group also maintains knowl-
netic determinants of human diseases. In our
edge resources to support translational research,
quest to identify disease biomarkers and to sup-
such as the databases DisGeNET and PsyGeNET.
port drug discovery projects, it is necessary to
She has published over 40 peer-reviewed articles,
place these wealth of information in the context of
and act as reviewer for the journals Bioinformat-
current biomedical knowledge. In this talk I will
ics, BMC Bioinformatics, BMC Systems Biol-
present our work in this area exemplified by the
ogy, Database and PLOS journals. She has par-
DisGeNET 1 and PsyGeNET 2 knowledge plat-
ticipated in several FP7 projects (@neurist, EU-
forms. The key role of text mining for extraction
ADR) and is currently involved in the IMI (Inno-
of relations between biomedical concepts will be
vative Medicines Initiative) projects eTOX, Open-
discussed 3 . I will present some of the hurdles
PHACTS, EMIF and IPiE and the H2020 project
we face in structuring the knowledge of human
MedBioinformatics.
diseases, such as the prevalence of data silos in
biomedicine, limitations of current ontologies and
the need of data curation and prioritization strate-
gies. In this regard I will share our experience for
data curation leveraging on users’ community and
crowdsourcing. Finally, the importance of build-
ing an ecosystem of linked data in biomedicine to
support translational research will be presented.
Biography
Laura I. Furlong is head of the Integrative Biomed-
ical Informatics Group, which belongs to the
Research Programme on Biomedical Informatics
(IMIM-UPF) and Associate Professor at the Uni-
versity Pompeu Fabra at Barcelona (Spain). She
has a PhD in Biology from the University of
Buenos Aires and a Msc in Bioinformatics by
University Pompeu Fabra. She has a broad ex-
pertise covering molecular biology, computational
systems biology and text mining. Her current
research lines include: a) development of new
strategies and tools for knowledge extraction from
1
http://www.disgenet.org/
2
http://www.psygenet.org/
3
http://ibi.imim.es/tools/befree/