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Melissa Haendel, PhD

Modeling and making computable the complex interplay between environmental and genetic causes and phenotypic outcomes.

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Orphan Drug Act of 1983

https://rarediseases.org/orphan-drug-act-resolution-introduced-in-congress/

https://globalgenes.org/rare-facts/

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Why the number of rare diseases is hard to determine (and is not 7000)

We don’t have the same criteria for “rare” around the world:

  • 1983: From the Orphan Drug Act: A rare disease affects fewer than 200,000 people
  • 2000: European Union considers a disease to be rare when it affects fewer than 1 in 2,000 people.

We add new diseases all the time, but don’t update the number:

  • New rare diseases are discovered every week by organizations such as the Undiagnosed Disease Network
  • The literature, OMIM, etc. abound by new weekly entries
  • N-of-1s are matched, defining new diseases in systems like the Matchmaker Exchange

We don’t define diseases in the same way

  • Dozens of terminologies and disease registries exist
  • These are often not included in clinical terminologies (such as ICD) commonly used in EHRs
  • Fundamentally, the definition of a rare disease and how to model it computationally has remained more an art than a science

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Why do I care about this?

=> Not having clear definitions of rare diseases makes them harder to build diagnostic tools and reveal mechanisms

=> yes identifiers matter!

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hpo.jax.org

  • Phenotyping terminology>14,500 terms

  • Computational disease models>190,000 disease-phenotype annotations

  • Widely adopted in rare disease genomic diagnostic tools

100,000 Genomes Project, SOLVE-RD, NIH-UDP, etc.

Human Phenotype Ontology (HPO)

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Fuzzy Phenotype Matching

Perfect Match

Fuzzy Match

No Match

Legend

DOI: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3009262

Not same variant, but same disease and gene, KMT2A.

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What is the most clinically useful way to

define and group diseases?

CANCER

COMPLEX

INFECTIOUS

MENDELIAN

RARE

We needed:

  • Disease concepts spanning multiple categories
  • A systematic way of relating these concepts

Why not just use mappings?

  • Many terminologies / ontologies / lists include mappings
    • These can be used to cross-walk
  • Problems:
    • Often mutually inconsistent
    • N^2 sets of mappings!
    • Not 1:1 equivalents

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Where did the definitions come from?

How do they relate?

Narrow synonym? Broad? Exact? Child? Parent?

Bayesian models like k-BOOM can help

Mungall

doi:10.1101/048843

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Mappings are insufficient

  • Proliferation of mappings
    • Too many combinations
    • Frequently conflicting
    • Frequently stale
  • Semantics unclear
    • Equivalent?
    • Exact?
    • Broad/Narrow/Related?
    • Without precise equivalence mapping, merging is not possible

C1

C2

C3

C4

C6

C5

(N^2)-N sets of mappings (if each source provides their own mappings to all)

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Example of problem with cycles

C0442874

Neuropathy

C0031117

Peripheral neuropathy

is-a

is-a

C4731�Neuropathy

C27580�PNS Disorder

C119734�Peripheral Neuropathy

External Resource

(NCIT)

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Different communities annotate different relationships, at different levels of granularity and using different vocabularies

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Systematically lump and split

to achieve disease harmony

bit.ly/mondo-io

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Evidence-based merging of �equivalent disease concepts

...

MESH

DC

DO

EFO

GARD

NCIT

Orphanet

k-BOOM

Bayesian

OWL

Ontology

Merging

Logical +

Probabilistic

Inference

Curated Equivalence

Relations

evaluate

iterative curator-assisted equivalence inference

curate

feedback

OMIM

MEDIC

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Each gold standard disease has a phenotype profile

# Associated Diseases

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Overall design principles

https://github.com/monarch-initiative/mondo/tree/master/src/patterns/dosdp-patterns

Dead Simple Ontology Design Patterns (DOSDP)

Pre-made patterns that specify:

  • label
  • text definition
  • synonyms
  • logical definition

Disease series by gene

pattern_name: disease_series_by_gene

description: >-

This pattern is for diseases that are caused by a single mutation in a single gene, that have gene-based names, such as new disease terms that are requested by ClinGen, like like MED12-related intellectual disability syndrome.

Examples: [MED12-related intellectual disability syndrome](http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/MONDO_0100000), [TTN-related myopathy](http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/MONDO_0100175), [MYPN-related myopathy](http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/MONDO_0015023)

classes:

disease: MONDO:0000001

gene: SO:0001217

relations:

disease has basis in dysfunction of: RO:0004020

vars:

disease: "'disease'"

gene: "'gene'"

name:

text: '%s caused by mutation in %s'

vars:

- disease

- gene

Design patterns allow for consistency amongst terms and consistent, automated classification of the hierarchy

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Anatomy of a Mondo term

summary

}

}

term

info

{

hierarchy

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How many rare diseases are there?

NCIT

DOID

GARD

Orphanet

OMIM

Just 5 sources comprise 10,577 unique rare disease concepts

(prior estimates ~7,500)

Only 333 shared disease concepts in all five sources

Many diseases are in only one source

Nature Reviews Drug Discovery (bit.ly/nature-rare-diseases)

Intersection size

5 selected sources

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Status and community development

MONDO IDs assigned and tracked for each concept

Use of standard ontology engineering practices

Periodically aligned and synced with existing resources

Released monthly (obo, owl, json)

OBO Foundry

obofoundry.org/ontology/mondo

Ontology Lookup Service

ebi.ac.uk/ols/ontologies/mondo

GitHub

github.com/monarch-initiative/mondo

>1300 issues reported

55 releases

Weekly Calls

Fridays, 9am PT/12pm ET

Zoom

Mailing list:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mondo-users

Major changes (such as obsoletion candidates or new releases) are shared with the mailing list regularly

Thank you to NHGRI for Phenomics First funding

Where to view Mondo

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Users

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https://bit.ly/clingen-mondo

Big thanks to our contributors!

Broad Institute

Samantha Baxter

Andrew Grant

Jessica Hekman

Madeline Hughes

Kate Megquier

Kathy Reinold

Rebecca Siegert

CHOP

Colin Ellis

Allison Heath

Ingo Helbig

Avi Kelman

CoRDS-Sanford

Austin Letcher

ClinGen

Larry Babb

Taylor Bingaman

Marina DiStefano

Jenny Goldstein

Brooke Palus

Heidi Rehm

Erin Riggs

Tam Sneddon

Courtney Thaxton

Matt Wright

EBI

Mélanie Courtot

Simon Jupp

David Osumi-Sutherland

Zoë Pendlington

Paola Roncaglia

GARD

Gioconda Alyea

PJ Brooks

Maria Della Rocca

Janine Lewis

Anne Pariser

Andrea Storm

Monarch Initiative

Melissa Haendel

Leigh Carmody

Shahim Essaid

Nomi Harris

Nico Matentzoglu

Julie McMurry

Moni Munoz-Torres

Peter Robinson

Kent Shefchek

Anne Thessen

Aaron Zhang

NCIt

Gilberto Fragoso

Bron Kisler

NIH NCATS

Alice Chen

Eric Sid

NCBI

Donna Maglott

Johns Hopkins

Christopher Chute

NIH NHGRI

Robert Fullem

Morgan Similuk

NORD

Vanessa Boulanger

OMIM

Joanna Amberger

Ada Hamosh

Orphanet

Marc Hanauer

Annie Olry

Ana Rath

University of Colorado

Tiffany Callahan

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Wide heterogeneity in:

  • placement of diseases hierarchically, and therefore meaning,
  • mapping to other diseases,
  • the number and typing of synonyms

Assessment of synonyms, hierarchies, and mappings across ontology sources for example diseases EDS and Pancreatic cancer

2018 statistics shown from this manuscript: