Plex Research has partnered 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, " said Androsavich.

“AI is a game-changer for efforts to discover exciting new uses for existing treatments that can be brought to patients more quickly. 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,” said Doug Selinger, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Plex Research.