Case Study: Alzheimer’s Research UK Oxford Drug Discovery Institute accelerates Alzheimer’s target discovery with Ontotext

Oxford Drug Discovery Institute Accelerated Alzheimer’s Breakthroughs by Harnessing Ontotext’s Target Discovery

Alzheimer’s Research UK Oxford Drug Discovery Institute needed to speed up the assessment of novel Alzheimer’s disease targets, but relevant information on 54 high-priority genes was sparse and scattered across many databases. Manual screening and ranking of thousands of genes was time-consuming and created a backlog, slowing down experimental validation. Ontotext’s Target Discovery platform was used to bring the data together and support target prioritization.

Ontotext implemented an AI-powered Target Discovery solution with customized ranking criteria, expression data, MarkerDB enrichment, and analytics such as gene-disease association and novelty scores. The result was a streamlined screening process across 30+ datasets, faster and higher-confidence target prioritization, and quicker lab validation. Ontotext said the approach can speed R&D by at least 6x, and the institute reported that narrowing gene sets could be done much faster, with only 1–2 people needed instead of a larger manual effort.

Alzheimer’s Research UK Oxford Drug Discovery Institute

Ayesha Khan

Research Informatician