Text Mining for Literature Review and Knowledge Discovery in Cancer Risk Assessment and Research

Research in biomedical text mining is starting to produce technology which can make information in biomedical literature more accessible for bio-scientists. One of the current challenges is to integrate and refine this technology to support real-life scientific tasks in biomedicine, and to evaluate its usefulness in the context of such tasks. We describe CRAB – a fully integrated text mining tool designed to support chemical health risk assessment. This task is complex and time-consuming, requiring a thorough review of existing scientific data on a particular chemical. Covering human, animal, cellular and other mechanistic data from various fields of biomedicine, this is highly varied and therefore difficult to harvest from literature databases via manual means. Our tool automates the process by extracting relevant scientific data in published literature and classifying it according to multiple qualitative dimensions. Developed in close collaboration with risk assessors, the tool allows navigating the classified dataset in various ways and sharing the data with other users. We present a direct and user-based evaluation which shows that the technology integrated in the tool is highly accurate, and report a number of case studies which demonstrate how the tool can be used to support scientific discovery in cancer risk assessment and research. Our work demonstrates the usefulness of a text mining pipeline in facilitating complex research tasks in biomedicine. We discuss further development and application of our technology to other types of chemical risk assessment in the future

COVID-19 and andrology: Recommendations of the French-speaking society of andrology (Société d'Andrologie de langue Française SALF)

International audienceSARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) metamorphosed our medical practice. In early June 2020, more than 6,400,000 COVID-19 (coronavirus-19 disease) cases were diagnosed across the world and more than 380,000 deaths were linked to COVID-19. Many medical symptoms of COVID-19 were reported. We will focus, here, on potential impacts of COVID-19 on men's andrological health. Our society (French-speaking society of andrology, SALF) also emitted some recommendations in the andrological management of men infected by SARS-CoV-2. First, considering the fever and the potential presence of SARS-CoV2 in semen, SALF recommends waiting for 3 months (duration of one spermatogenesis cycle and epididymal transit) before re-starting ART in the case of men diagnosed COVID-19 positive. Whatever the nature of testosterone and COVID-19 relationships, we recommend an andrological examination, sperm parameters, and hormonal evaluation at the time of the COVID-19 is diagnosed, and several months later. Furthermore, we are concerned by the potential morbid-mortality of the COVID-19, which mainly affects men. This "andrological bias", if proven, must be reduced by specific andrological diagnosis, therapeutic and prophylactic measures. Research in this direction must be substantiated and financially supported over the next few months (years).Le SRAS-CoV-2 (nouveau coronavirus ou coronavirus numéro 2 responsable du syndrome respiratoire aigu sévère) a métamorphosé notre pratique médicale. Début juin 2020, plus de 6,400,000 cas de COVID-19 (maladie à coronavirus 2019) ont été diagnostiqués dans le monde et plus de 380,000 décès ont été reliés à cette maladie. De nombreux symptômes médicaux de cette infection virale ont été signalés. Nous nous concentrerons, ici, sur les impacts potentiels de COVID-19 sur la santé andrologique des hommes. Notre société (Société d’andrologie de langue Française, SALF) émet ici quelques recommandations dans la prise en charge andrologique des hommes infectés par le SRAS-CoV-2. Tout d’abord, compte tenu de la fièvre et de la présence potentielle du SRAS-CoV2 dans le sperme, la SALF recommande d’attendre 3 mois (durée d’un cyclede spermatogenèse et transit épididymaire) avant de recommencer les techniques d’assistance médicale à la procréation pour les hommes diagnostiqués COVID-19 positifs. Quelle que soit la nature des relations entre la testostérone et l’infection à SARS-CoV-2, nous recommandons un examen andrologique, un examen des paramètres du sperme et une évaluation hormonale au moment du diagnostic de l’infection, ainsi qu’à distance (3–6 mois plus tard). De plus, nous sommes préoccupés par la morbidité et la mortalité potentielles de l’infection COVID-19, qui touche principalement les hommes. Ce “biais andrologique”, s’il est. prouvé, doit être réduit par un diagnostic andrologique spécifique et des mesures thérapeutiques et prophylactiques.La recherche dans ce sens doit être étayée et soutenue financièrement au cours des prochains mois (années)