SEATTLE, Dec. 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Teranode Corporation, the leading innovator of experiment design automation (XDA) software for the Life Sciences industry, today announced it will collaborate with Science Commons, a project of the non-profit corporation Creative Commons, to build and implement the industry's first neurology repository for the Semantic Web. The project, dubbed NeuroCommons.org (www.neurocommons.org), will be a freely accessible neurology commons of data, tools, and pathway knowledge to be used by public and private researchers. Science Commons will use Teranode's award-winning platform, TERANODE XDA, as the infrastructure for NeuroCommons.org. All content will be available in Resource Description Framework (RDF), allowing participating foundations to search and access a shared repository of data and research, currently restricted by different formats and copyright restrictions.
Life sciences represent an ideal test case for the Semantic Web. Data flows into life sciences from an astonishing diversity of sources: brain images, robot-arrayed "gene chips," machines sorting materials cell-by-cell, gene sequencers, and massively high throughput chemical screens. NeuroCommons.org will help harness that diversity for private and public neurological researchers. Science Commons' contributions will be to develop a community of users, provide access to leaders in Healthcare and Life Sciences, and provide partnerships in the area of natural language processing and content.
"NeuroCommons.org will integrate pathway knowledge, experiment data, and tools into a unified asset simplifying access to a broader range of resources for researchers," said John Wilbanks, executive director for Science Commons. "The collaboration will lower unintended legal and technical barriers to research, facilitate communication and materials usage between scientists, and increase innovation opportunities for accelerated research of new therapies."
NeuroCommons.org will be implemented using semantic web standards in order to optimize information access and ensure flexible community curation. Semantic web standards allow data from multiple sources and ontologies to be integrated into one information space. The resulting integrated information space breaks down the barriers to access created by existing siloed databases and opaque schemas. Enriched by the RDF format, the information can be searched, analyzed, and curated to bring new insights to a broader range of people.
"Semantic web standards hold the best promise of providing data access and curation for multiple science disciplines within multiple legal frameworks," said Matthew Shanahan, CMO for Teranode. "Teranode is excited to collaborate with Science Commons on building the NeuroCommons.org asset for the benefit of patients and the wider research community."
About Science Commons
Science Commons is a project of the non-profit corporation Creative Commons. It was launched in 2005 with the support of the HighQ Foundation and Creative Commons. Science Commons is overseen by members of the Creative Commons board; including MIT computer science professor Hal Abelson, intellectual property experts James Boyle, Michael Carroll, and Lawrence Lessig, and lawyer and documentary filmmaker Eric Saltzman. Bioinformatics entrepreneur and metadata expert John Wilbanks is the executive director of the project.
Science Commons is housed at and receives generous support from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Science Commons shares space, staff, and inspiration with the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
About Teranode Corporation
Teranode Corporation, a venture-backed company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, is the leading innovator of experiment design automation (XDA) software that integrates in-silico and lab experimentation. Teranode's award-winning products are used by leading pharmaceutical, biotechnology, research, and academic organizations, including Pfizer, AstraZeneca, NIH Chemical Genomics Center, MIT, and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, to improve the speed and value of experimentation in R&D and then share chemical and biological knowledge enterprise-wide. For more information, visit http://www.teranode.com .
CONTACT: Cathy Wright of Kulesa Public Relations, +1-650-340-1985, or cathy@kulesapr.com, for Teranode.
Teranode CorporationCONTACT: Cathy Wright of Kulesa Public Relations, +1-650-340-1985, orcathy@kulesapr.com, for Teranode
