pistoia-pgo

is a Ontology.

The Pistoia Alliance Pharma General Ontology (PGO) is a collaborative initiative to provide a shared upper-level reference ontology for the pharmaceutical industry. PGO aims to serve as a "Rosetta Stone" enabling semantic interoperability within and across organizations by identifying key concepts used throughout the drug development lifecycle and selecting public resources that can provide identifiers for each concept. Rather than creating new ontologies or mandating specific terminologies, PGO focuses on providing clear mechanisms to enable unambiguous declaration of the resources used and capturing the criteria for selecting semantic artifacts. The project follows FAIR principles and reuses existing semantic resources, including ontologies and controlled terminologies, as well as open source community software. The initial phase focuses on Research & Development (R&D) operations, defining core concepts and recommendations for associating controlled terminologies to service data exchange among pharmaceutical industry stakeholders. PGO is developed using LinkML for representing and documenting each type, and is supported by a consortium of major pharmaceutical companies including AstraZeneca, Chiesi Group, GSK, Merck KGaA, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, and Hoffmann-La Roche.

Domains

drug discovery, upper

License

CC BY 4.0

Homepage

pistoia-pgo

Repository

GitHub

Infores ID

Unknown

FAIRsharing ID

Unknown

Product Summary

Contacts

Pistoia Alliance

Email: giovanni.nisato@pistoiaalliance.org

URL: https://www.pistoiaalliance.org/

Giovanni Nisato

Github: Giovanni-Nisato

Philippe Rocca-Serra

Github: proccaserra

Products

From this Resource
ID Name URL Category Format Description
pistoia-pgo.github PGO GitHub Repository Pistoia-Alliance-PGO OntologyProduct yaml GitHub repository containing the PGO ...
pistoia-pgo.documentation PGO Documentation Website Pistoia-Alliance-PGO DocumentationProduct http Documentation website for PGO includi...
pistoia-pgo.core_concepts PGO Core Concepts (Version 1.0) 2025_PGO_V1.0_core_concepts.md (4.4 KB) DocumentationProduct txt List of PGO Version 1.0 core concepts...
pistoia-pgo.use_cases PGO Use Cases pharma-general-ontology-use-cases DocumentationProduct http High-level use cases demonstrating PG...

Details

Description

The Pistoia Alliance Pharma General Ontology (PGO) is a collaborative initiative to provide a shared upper-level reference ontology for the pharmaceutical industry.

Overview

PGO addresses the challenge of insufficient and ambiguous asset descriptions that hamper information exchange within and across pharmaceutical organizations. The project aims to serve as a “Rosetta Stone” enabling semantic interoperability by establishing agreed-upon core concepts and providing clear recommendations for controlled terminologies.

Key Features

  • Core Concepts: Defines essential entities most frequently used when exchanging pharmaceutical R&D data
  • Controlled Terminologies: Specifies value-sets for key attributes using community-agreed resources
  • FAIR Principles: Follows Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable data management principles
  • LinkML Implementation: Uses LinkML for representing and documenting ontology types
  • Reuse-First Approach: Leverages existing semantic resources rather than creating new ones
  • Machine-Actionable: Creates machine-readable documentation to facilitate automation

Project Roadmap

Phase 1 (2023-2025):

  • Initial scoping and identification of core concepts
  • Expert consultation and alignment
  • Formalization of core concepts
  • First public release using LinkML

Phase 2 (2025-2026):

  • Field testing and application
  • Complement core-concept vocabulary
  • Updated version release

Project Sponsors

The PGO project is supported by major pharmaceutical companies:

  • AstraZeneca
  • Chiesi Group
  • GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)
  • Merck KGaA
  • Novo Nordisk
  • Pfizer
  • Hoffmann-La Roche AG

Use Cases

PGO enables:

  • Unambiguous identification of essential pharmaceutical entities
  • Clear declaration of semantic resources used in data exchange
  • Validation and facilitation of drug development data discovery
  • Promotion of interoperability across pharmaceutical organizations
  • Value delivery in the drug development pipeline

Contacts

  • Pistoia Alliance (https://www.pistoiaalliance.org/)
  • Giovanni Nisato (Project Manager)
  • Philippe Rocca-Serra (Technical Lead)

Products

PGO GitHub Repository

GitHub repository containing the PGO core concepts, documentation, and LinkML schemas

URL: https://github.com/Pistoia-Alliance-Inc/Pistoia-Alliance-PGO

Format: linkml

PGO Documentation Website

Documentation website for PGO including core concepts, process descriptions, and use cases

URL: https://pistoia-alliance-inc.github.io/Pistoia-Alliance-PGO/

Format: html

PGO Core Concepts (Version 1.0)

List of PGO Version 1.0 core concepts defining essential entities for pharmaceutical R&D data exchange

URL: https://github.com/Pistoia-Alliance-Inc/Pistoia-Alliance-PGO/blob/development/2025_PGO_V1.0_core_concepts.md

Format: markdown

PGO Use Cases

High-level use cases demonstrating PGO applications in pharmaceutical data exchange

URL: https://www.pistoiaalliance.org/resource-library/pharma-general-ontology-use-cases/

This resource was manually curated for the Knowledge Graph Registry.

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Created: November 10, 2025 | Last modified: November 10, 2025