Bioz Accelerates
Scientific Research and Drug Discovery with First Search Engine Built for Life
Science Experimentation
New Software Startup Emerges from the Scientific World with Industry-First
Search Engine, $3 Million in Funding and Bioz Star Ratings
PALO ALTO, Calif.
July 20, 2016 Bioz, Inc. came out of stealth today with the introduction of the world's first search engine for life
science experimentation to speed scientific research into finding cures for
diseases and to accelerate drug discovery. Bioz has been enthusiastically welcomed
in scientific communities via an early beta program. Currently, over 30,000 users from academic research
labs and industry R&D labs, from more than 1,000 universities and biopharma
companies, from 40 countries are using Bioz. The company was co-founded
by serial entrepreneur and CEO Daniel Levitt, and accomplished Stanford research scientist Karin
Lachmi, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer at Bioz.
"We created Bioz to disrupt the slow and siloed nature
of life science research by increasing knowledge sharing and successful
experimentation, ultimately helping to speed up the rate of drug discovery",
said Daniel Levitt, co-founder and CEO of Bioz. "The life science research market
is ripe for technology innovation that can streamline experimentation and arm
researchers with tools to work faster, smarter and more cost-effectively."
Each year,
researchers in academia and biopharma spend $80 billion to purchase millions of
products (reagents, consumables and instruments) for use in life science experiments.
Some of these products have very high failure rates; a case in point are
antibodies that don't work up to 50 percent of the time, and yet before Bioz
there was no easy way for researchers to quickly find, compare and select the products
that would work best in their specific assays and experiments.
"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", said Dr. Karin Lachmi,
co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Bioz. "Here was an opportunity to transform
an inefficient product selection process, disrupt the life science tools industry
and change the world. If we can help researchers save months of study due to
failed experiments, imagine the strides science will be able to make. Bioz has
a single mission � to make scientific research faster, more cost-effective and
more accurate than ever before."
Typically, life
science researchers go through a tedious and manual review process to reference
similar published research papers when designing new experiments. But the text
in articles is dense and the volume of available material is staggering. A new
paper is published every 10 seconds and can run more than 30 pages, creating a
limitless haystack of unstructured information.
The Bioz cloud
platform's patent-pending software architecture taps the latest advances in Natural
Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) to mine and structure
hundreds of millions of pages of complex and unstructured scientific papers,
placing an unprecedented amount of summarized scientific experimentation knowledge
at researchers' fingertips. The Bioz platform helps researchers select
products, plan experiments, write papers, apply for grants and collaborate,
speeding up experimentation and drug discovery.
Introducing the Bioz Star System
Today, the
company also introduced Bioz Stars, the first and only unbiased rating system
to help scientists around the world to quickly identify the right products for
their experiments. Bioz Stars are unbiased and objective algorithmic ratings
that are displayed for over 200 million life science products, tools, reagents,
lab equipment, instruments, assays and kits. Bioz Stars are based on the analysis
of millions of peer-reviewed papers using a groundbreaking algorithm with weighted
quantitative and qualitative parameters, helping researchers make knowledgeable
decisions that ensure future experiments are better, faster and more cost-effective.
Bioz Stars
benefit researchers who are searching for products to use in their experiments,
and vendors of life science tools who can view their product ratings.
Silicon Valley Startup Closes $3 Million in Funding
As part of today's announcement, Bioz also disclosed $3 million in seed
funding, led by 5AM
Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm focused on building
next-generation life science companies. Stanford-StartX
Fund, Astia
Angels and other institutional and individual investors, including Esther
Dyson, well-known journalist, author, investor and philanthropist, also
invested in the round. The funding will be used for platform development,
building the Bioz user base, increasing global awareness and growing the
business.
Bioz is the world's first and only cloud search engine built for life
science experimentation. Bioz is available free to researchers and is currently
in beta. For more information, visit www.bioz.com.
Supporting Quotes
"The
market opportunity for Bioz is huge", said Andrew Schwab, founder and managing
partner of 5AM Ventures. "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."
"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. To a scientist, the quality of a
tool matters as much as a hotel might to a traveler", said Esther Dyson, a Bioz
investor. "But until Bioz, there hasn't been any reliable way for a scientist
to know what she is getting when she orders supplies."
"Millions of online searches are performed every day
by researchers around the world looking to discover the next big disease cure,
said Professor Gary Wilcox, a Bioz investor, and a developer of Cialis. Bioz
revolutionizes search technology and delivers information in a way that focuses
on the researcher. Bioz is like no other search tool, as it structures
scientific data in an extremely useful way.
"Historically,
researchers have been bound to combing through countless academic papers when
embarking on new research projects", said Professor Roger Kornberg, Nobel
Laureate and Scientific Advisor to Bioz. "Bioz represents the future and
drastically reduces research time. What's more, no other platform on the market
today provides an unbiased product rating system to help researchers plan
experiments. The Bioz platform and Bioz Stars will not only change the way
researchers approach experimentation, but will affect society as a whole given
a speedier drug discovery process."
"What
previously took me months to find when working on a new experiment, I found in
mere minutes with Bioz", said Stanford Professor Giles Plant, an early Bioz
user.
Helpful Links
* Bioz
Suggested
Tweet: .@BiozPage accelerates scientific research, drug discovery w/1st
search engine built for #lifescience experimentation http://bit.ly/29QNAEo
About Bioz, Inc.
Bioz, Inc.
is the world's first search engine for life science experimentation. The
patent-pending software platform combines the work of scientists with advanced
Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Machine Learning (ML) to help life
scientists in academia and biopharma make faster and smarter experimentation
decisions, ultimately speeding drug discovery and increasing the rate of
success in finding cures for diseases. Founded in 2013 by Stanford research
scientist, Karin Lachmi, Ph.D., and CEO Daniel Levitt, Bioz is a StartX
accelerator company. Bioz is used by 30,000 researchers from over 1,000
universities and companies in 40 countries. Try Bioz at www.bioz.com.
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Media Contact:
Shannon Campbell
Kulesa Faul for Bioz
916-521-7058