Dr. Melissa Haendel (Sarah Graham Kenan Distinguished Professor, Genetics) was awarded a new R24 grant from the NIH Office of the Director for her project titled “An AI-powered informatics resource for accelerating New Approach Methodologies research”.
This study proposes to create an AI-powered informatics resource that systematically organizes, compares, and benchmarks NAMs in the context of other preclinical and clinical models. The first step will be to develop NAMO (New Approach Methodology Ontology) and construct a comprehensive knowledge graph that links NAMs, animal models, and human biological systems across molecular, cellular, and physiological scales. This graph will enable structured, biologically contextualized comparisons and allow computation of cross-model agreement scores. Building on this foundation, the plan is to implement AI-driven methods to recommend optimal model selection, guide model reuse, and identify gaps where no current model adequately captures human biology—directing the development of new or improved NAMs. Finally, the team proposes to deploy these capabilities to the research community through interactive tools, APIs, and best-practice guidelines, empowering scientists to justify model choice, design reproducible experiments, and cross-validate findings.