Findings likely to generate hypotheses about potential new uses of drugs
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Plex Research, a biotechnology company using autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) to aid in drug discovery, today announced that it is partnering with Ginkgo Datapoints, a service of Ginkgo Bioworks, to use the Plex AI Platform to deepen the understanding of compound treatment mechanisms of action, potentially revealing new therapeutic applications, based on a large perturbation response profiling dataset.
Perturbation response profiling is a powerful method for mapping how cells respond to genetic or chemical changes. Ginkgo Datapoints’ GDPx2 dataset is a large-scale transcriptomics survey that measures compound-induced gene expression across diverse human cells. At close to 4 terabytes (TB) in size, it consists of data generated from 4 human primary cell types, 85 compound treatments, 6 doses and 4 replicates. The data were generated using DRUG-seq, an ultra-high throughput, miniaturized transcriptomics assay. The Plex AI Platform is built to enable researchers to make new connections between drugs and diseases, both uncovering new possibilities for drug repurposing and refining understanding of drug efficacy and safety. Plex’s uniquely transparent approach means that all findings can be explicitly linked to supporting experimental data points, allowing rigorous evaluation and targeted follow-up.
“The combined power of our robust, end-to-end data generation services, particularly in high-throughput transcriptomics using primary cells and other complicated cell models, with the innovative data analysis capabilities from Plex Research could unlock new, clinically relevant insights related to diseases and treatments,” said John Androsavich, Ph.D., General Manager of Ginkgo Datapoints. “Efficiently adding rich context to data generated on-demand to extract insights is a sea change in how biological research is conducted and is representative of this new era for biotech we are ushering in. We are eager to share the results of this effort with the scientific community.”
“AI is a game-changer for efforts to discover exciting new uses for existing treatments that can be brought to patients more quickly,” said Doug Selinger, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Plex Research. “Plex’s unique focal graph approach can tackle challenges that machine learning-only approaches cannot. We look forward to uncovering intriguing new findings when we point Plex at Gingko’s impressive dataset.”
Selinger will speak on the panel, “Investing in the Future of Drug Discovery: Breakthrough Technologies to Watch,” at the Bio-IT World Conference and Expo on April 3, 2025, at 4:20 pm ET in Boston. The conference runs from April 2-4, 2025.
About Ginkgo Bioworks
Ginkgo Bioworks is the leading horizontal platform for cell programming, providing flexible, end-to-end services that solve challenges for organizations across diverse markets, from food and agriculture to pharmaceuticals to industrial and specialty chemicals.
About Ginkgo Datapoints
Ginkgo Datapoints, a leading AI-driven Contract Research Organization (CRO), revolutionizes drug discovery by uniting advanced high-throughput screening (HTS) capabilities with specialized assay development and CRISPR-based genetic engineering. As a fee-for-service provider serving pharmaceutical, biotech, and TechBio companies of all sizes, Ginkgo Datapoints delivers high-quality data and services for target identification, validation, and drug discovery. Ginkgo Datapoints offers unparalleled scale and unit economics for perturbation response profiling (DRUG-seq, High Content Imaging) giving customers the ability to screen thousands of compounds and genetic targets.
Learn more here: https://datapoints.ginkgo.bio/
About Plex Research
Plex Research has combined its proprietary focal graph technology with large language models (LLMs) to create a novel, transparent form of artificial intelligence (AI) that can dramatically accelerate drug discovery efforts. Plex recently introduced AutoPlex, an agent-based AI system that can autonomously plan and execute complex drug discovery research programs. Plex’s platform works on massive amounts of minimally processed experimental data from numerous pharmacological and multi-omics sources, exposing hidden connections and enabling groundbreaking discoveries – all with fully traceable supporting data.
Plex Research, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, provides discovery services and enterprise-level solutions, including secure client data integration.
Connect on LinkedIn or learn more here: http://www.plexresearch.com/
Contacts
Media Contact:
Andrea Vuturo
Vuturo Group for Plex Research
[email protected]
+1 (415) 689-8414
