The UK 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.
According to Biorelate, the cognitive computing platform behind Galactic 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”, said the UK start-up, adding that systematically analysing the data available on targets, drugs and disease mechanisms from data repositories and academic papers takes researchers over a year on average.
“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”, said Dr Daniel Jamieson, CEO and founder, Biorelate.
The company said users of the Galactic web tool can navigate 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. 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.