Glossary

assay group

Refers to the grouping of different assays (of differing assay levels) which demonstrate similar characteristics (historically based on their accuracy) into a hierarchically organised representative group [1].

assay level

Refers to the hierarchical organisation of individual assays (historically based on their accuracy) and the assignment of a corresponding assay level value [1].

assay value inheritance

Refers to AP-Portal’s mechanism for enabling IC50 values recorded by one assay to be inherited by another assay (based on their hierarchical ordering) as a substitute for missing measurements. For example, an IonWorks Barracuda® IC50 value for NaV1.5 being substituted into PatchXpress® assay data if no PatchXpress® NaV1.5 measurement existed [1].

back-end components

Refers generally to the non- public-interfacing components (for example business-manager, app-manager, dose-response-manager, etc).

change checker

Device which detects whether an existing simulation for a compound needs to be re-run for whatever reason, for example, if it detects different input IC50 values between the previous run request and the current run request (due to new assay data availability) [1].

dose-response data

A generic term indicating the dose-response data (e.g. the individual dose-response points) associated with a individual data record.

emulator

See variability lookup tables.

experimental data

Refers to data derived from animal studies such as ventricular wedge assays.

front-end components

Refers generally to the public-interfacing components, i.e. client and client-direct.

generic portal components

Refers to the open source, publicly available portal components, e.g. client, business-manager-api, etc, which have generic (i.e. non- site-specific) processing.

individual data

A generic term indicating the result of an assay experiment. There may be a number of individual data records for a compound, and for some systems these individual data records are aggregated into a summary data record. Alternative names which may be encountered are “full curve” or “percent inhibition” data.
An individual data record may also link to the detailed dose-response data from which it is derived.

input data gathering

Refers to the process of directly calling site-business via a WS invocation in order to determine the pIC50 input data for a compound, i.e. it won’t run a simulation [1].

internationalised

AP-Portal’s i18n capabilities.

local

Very generally refers to objects on the portal’s host filesystem, the portal itself, or perhaps the wider on-site area.

pIC50 evaluation

pIC50 evaluation is the technique by which AP-Portal determines the pIC50 value (or values) to use (or reject, perhaps due to quality control) in a simulation for each available ion channel and assay combination.
There will be a number of pIC50 evaluators available, each representing a method of obtaining a pIC50 from the available data (e.g. perhaps both IC50 and IC20 values are available), organised hierarchically, with the expectation that the pIC50 value to use (or reject) will be derived from the first evaluator to provide (or reject) a pIC50. [1].

portal repository

Refers to the portal’s generic, version-controlled source code repository at https://bitbucket.org/gef_work/ap_predict_online.

screening data

Refers to data derived from ion channel screening device assays such as HTS (High Throughput Screening)` machines, e.g. PatchXpress®.

site-specific

Refers to bespoke configurations, settings or source code which is specific to the site which is hosting the portal, e.g. a site’s ion channel data processing code, a site’s user authentication code, or a site’s ion channels and assay configurations.

summary data

A generic term indicating that individual data has been aggregated into a summary record somehow.

variability

“variability” may be used interchangeably with “spread” and “uncertainty”!
This term refers to ion channel variability, as explained in this research article.

variability lookup tables

In order to present variability results ApPredict requires the availability of large lookup table files.
Since early 2018 these tables have been also been referred to as “Emulators”.

Footnotes

[1]	(1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) client system only feature.