Biorelate, a Manchester-based AI start up, is offering all researchers free use of Galactic, its cloud-based web tool, to support biomedical research while lab access is restricted around the world.
Systematically analysing the data available on targets, drugs and disease mechanisms from data repositories and academic papers takes researchers over a year on average. The cognitive computing platform behind Galactic (Galactic-AI™) can speed up the research process by collecting and curating more than 30 million biomedical research text sources. With up to 80% of biomedical data thought to be unstructured, the platform helps researchers to generate a clearer view of the current state of research and gain invaluable insights.
In an open letter to cancer researchers, Cancer Research UK noted: “Universities are partially closed, laboratories have wound down their activities, experiments have stopped. Researchers are continuing to work productively from home, writing papers, analysing data, pulling together collaborations, reading the literature and generating ideas. But the progress of research will slow down, and this will inevitably have an impact on researchers’ careers and the lives of people affected by cancer.”
Dr. Daniel Jamieson, CEO and founder of Biorelate, commented: “As so many scientists focus on COVID-19, a serious risk is that research into other diseases grinds to a halt. Our platform auto-curates knowledge, helping researchers across all disease areas make better use of all the existing and emerging scientific data locked away in text. We very much hope that with the release of Galactic, a browser-ready search engine to our platform, researchers will be able to take advantage of potential insights into focal points of research, such as drug targets and indications, at a time when they are more limited to desk-based activities.”
Kevin Cox, Chairman of Biorelate, added: “We believe that Galactic has an important role to play in helping those involved in drug discovery to continue their research and ensure we get new therapies to patients without delay. We’re pleased to be offering free access to the Galactic web app at a time when researchers are in desperate need of this kind of resource and support. We have had very positive feedback from early adopters, who are using the tool to find causally related data and perform systematic and pragmatic reviews.”
Users of the Galactic web tool can navigate Galactic’s tailored portals to find research, experts, organisations and hidden insights – such as causal interactions – and make hypotheses and predictions while saving significant time and resources. The tool also offers more technical functionality for large enterprises who want to input their own textual content and ontologies they’ve designed in house.
For more data science or informatics-led activities, Biorelate offers direct access to curated data from the platform, to provide, for example, novel causal interactions that can be used to investigate biological pathways and study the impact of drugs on specific disease models. Biorelate also offers bespoke services in using the platform, Galactic-AI™, in combination with data science expertise to help solve and answer important drug discovery questions. Their experts put together evidence and rationale and bridge the gaps in a customer’s understanding of targets/indications to guide their clinical strategy.
