Startups

A Google to soothe life sciences research woes?

A startup emerges from stealth mode to launch a new life sciences search engine to make the selection of reagents and equipment faster, more accurate and cost effective.

Young woman in laboratory dripping liquid into glassware

Bioz, a Palo Alto, California, software startup, is launching a life sciences search engine to speed up drug discovery and innovation.

Could this do to the search and selection of life sciences research products what Google did in the world of internet searches?

Bioz came out of stealth mode Wednesday to reveal that the beta version of its product is being used by 30,000 users in academic research labs, industry R&D labs, more than 1,000 universities and biopharma companies based in 40 countries worldwide.

The goal is to essentially to use a cloud platform and data mining capability to automate and organize the manual review process required to reference similar published research papers when designing new experiments.

That manual review process is cumbersome given that “a new paper is published every 10 seconds and can run more than 30 pages, creating a limitless haystack of unstructured information,” according to Bioz.

Here’s how co-founder Dr. Karin Lachmi, a Stanford researcher and chief scientific officer at Bioz, characterized the conundrum facing researchers:

“As a researcher, I can personally attest to the challenges in research trial and error, which slows the pace of scientific discovery and the ultimate path to curing diseases,” Lachmi said in a prepared statement.

The problem, in many cases stems with the question of which antibody to select.  The problem with antibodies is well documented, with some believing that half of them are unreliable. That is concerning given that they are the backbone to life science experiments. Lachmi and Daniel Levitt, serial entrepreneur, Bioz founder and CEO, believe that Bioz can help in better selection of such products.

“Here was an opportunity to transform an inefficient product selection process, disrupt the life science tools industry and change the world,” Lachmi said. “If we can help researchers save months of study due to failed experiments, imagine the strides science will be able to make.”

So how does the search engine work?

Bioz screen shot

Bioz has created a star system (pictured above) that uses algorithms to rate 200 million life science products, tools, reagents, lab equipment, instruments, assays and kits. The stars represent the likelihood that the product will perform successfully in an experiment. This is an unbiased rating based on a propreitary algorithm with multiple weighted and normalized parameters.

‘Mentions’ refers to the number of experiments in which researchers used this product in the article that they authored. ‘Impact’ refers to the journal impact factor, as published by Thomson Reuters  which reflects journal prominence). ‘Recency’ refers to the newness of the articles within which the product was mentioned.

While Bioz will aide in the product selection process, it doesn’t handle any transactions. But scientists can easily get to the relevant suppliers from Bioz.

Some investors are betting that the startup has unearthed a key unmet need in the innovation ecosystem and provided $3 million in seed funding.

“The market opportunity for Bioz is huge,” said Andrew Schwab, founder and managing partner of 5AM Ventures, that led the round, in a prepared statement. “We see Bioz filling a significant gap in the life science ecosystem and we’re excited to be on this journey with them to revolutionize how researchers select reagents, consumables, instruments and equipment, ultimately accelerating drug discovery.”

Other investors who participated in the seed funding include are Astia Angels and Esther Dyson, journalist, author and investor.

“People think of science experiments as a bit abstract: either you do something right or you do it wrong. But actually, the quality of the tools and the supplies matters greatly,” Dyson said in the Bioz news release.

She added that “until Bioz, there hasn’t been any reliable way for a scientist to know what she is getting when she orders supplies.”

The slow and siloed nature of life sciences research has been the target of a different, more high-profile, albeit narrower initiative: Vice President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot program. One of the efforts unveiled at the National Cancer Moonshot Summer at the end of June was to expand access to novel compounds through the National Cancer Institute.

NCI is creating a public-private partnership with 20-30 pharma and biotech companies to speed up researchers’ access to investigational agents and approved drugs. By the end of the year, the first agents will be available to researchers who can get drug compounds through one pre-approved “formulary” list. This would allow them to test the compounds for new purposes or in new combinations.

This cracks through a very big silo: the need for researchers to have to negotiate with each company separately for individual research projects. The news release from the White House says this process can take as long as 18 months. The hope is that having on pre-approved formulary list will hasten the start of clinical trials and can bring new options to cancer patients more quickly.

Photo: Bioz

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