NEWS The world's largest public database of cell images has been released and Umeå University is one of the project's partners. It is hoped that the database will accelerate drug development.
The public database will make the development of medicines more efficient.
ImageMarkus NordinThe database will enable researchers all over the world to study changes in cells. Several large pharmaceutical companies have long worked with non-profit organisations, such as the Broad Institute, in the JUMP-Cell Painting Consortium to collect large amounts of data.
Umeå University has also contributed as a partner, developing entirely new types of efficient and powerful data analysis methods for these large-scale data.
"Life science research is currently undergoing a paradigm shift where experiments in the lab are increasingly being replaced by simulations in computers to design new drugs. For example, it took computers just two days to develop the mRNA vaccine against covid-19 instead of years of lab experiments. Here, algorithms of the type we are developing and access to large-scale data are key," says Johan Trygg, professor at the Department of Chemistry at Umeå University.
When the database is complete, it will contain images of more than two billion cells.
The technique the researchers will have access to is called cell painting and it is used to detect small differences between different cell samples that can be linked to disease, genetic changes or drug effects.
The database allows researchers to create and share cell imaging data with each other, which can be used to develop new drugs.