July 20, 2016
By Alex Keown, BioSpace.com Breaking News Staff
PALO ALTO, Calif. – If you’re a scientific researcher a huge chunk of your time is taken up by plowing through countless articles to determine how to structure your research. That process takes a long time. Until now, there had not been a better way.
That’s where Bay Area-based Bioz comes in. The new software startup has unveiled an industry-first search engine built exclusively for the life sciences industry. The goal of the new search engine is to speed up scientific research in order to accelerate the time it takes to get potential life-saving therapies into the clinic, Daniel Levitt, chief executive officer of Bioz told BioSpace in an exclusive interview.
Levitt said it won’t take researchers much time at all to get used to the search engine, which he said is similar in function to Google , but domain specific to the life sciences. Bioz also provides a much deeper search.
A new paper is published every 10 seconds and can run more than 30 pages, creating a limitless haystack of unstructured information. Levitt said their platform goes through the scientific articles and analyzes the text, similar to what researchers would do manually. Then it structures the information extracted into meaningful insight for the researchers.
Levitt said some early users of the platform have said the search engine can shave off about six months of research time and allow them to begin lab work sooner.
“This won’t cure cancer, but it will help those looking for a cure for cancer find that cure,” Levitt said.
Levitt said life sciences research costs companies and academic institutions about $80 billion annually, but their technology that can disrupt the system by making things easier and more efficient.
Karin Lachmi, one of the co-founders of Bioz, told BioSpace that Google provides users with a broad search, but the Bioz platform allows researchers to go much deeper and are provided with a summarization of millions of articles.
A research scientist in her own right, Lachmi said the Bioz platform taps into the library of the National Institute of Health. Before the new Bioz platform, Lachmi said scientists would have to download PDFs of each of these articles and read through them, many being between 20 and 30 pages long. The scientists would have to set up their own tables to cross check information. The new search engine eliminates that by allowing scientists to search through each article and cross check information with other articles.
“It’s difficult to understand why we didn’t have the Internet research tools like you do when you’re shopping for a new pair of shoes or a television,” Lachmi said.
Levitt agreed, saying it was strange to him that all the previous research information was available, but “nobody had gone through and indexed and structured it.”
More than 30,000 users have beta-tested the search engine and have overwhelmingly given it a thumbs up, Levitt said. Lachmi said the current beta-users love the product because there’s nothing like it on the market and it can help the researchers “make unbiased decisions” when it comes to deciding which products to use in experiments.
The Bioz search engine also has its own “Yelp-like” rating system called Bioz Stars. The new stars system is designed to help scientists using the search engine to identify the right products for their experiments, Levitt said. Drawing on another online model such as Amazon, Bioz Stars is expected to benefit researchers who are searching for products to use in their experiments and connect them with vendors of life science tools who can view their product ratings, Levitt said.
“A researcher will go to Bioz, put in product information and they’ll be shown a rated score that indicates how likely the product will be useful for a researcher’s experiment, Levitt said.
Bioz launches with $3 million in seed funding, which was led by 5AM Ventures, a company that has helped launch other pharma startups, including Ideaya Biosciences, which focuses on the development of immuno-oncology therapies.
Levitt said Bioz intends to use the funding for continued platform development, building the Bioz user base, increasing global awareness and growing the business.
“We’re satisfying the researchers and vendors at the same time in bringing both sides together,” Levitt said. “We’re excited to change the world.”
