Linguamatics and ChemAxon have won funding from the Eurostars Program for what the groups are calling the first interactive text-mining system specifically for chemistry research, according to the companies. The Eurostars award totals $870,000, GenomeWeb reported.
The system, which will combine chemical search and text-mining capabilities, will enable researchers to quickly search scientific literature for, say, chemicals that serve as inhibitors of certain biological targets. In drug research, scientists are working on a variety of compounds that home in on such targets to inhibit the molecular drivers of disease with limited impact on healthy tissues. And such personalized medical research appears to be one of the many applications of the companies' planned text-mining system.
In fact, the companies say that pharma and biotech outfits are expected to be the main customers for the technology. With this tool, ChemAxon and Linguamatics want drug companies or other users to be able to do chemical evaluations, hunt for new chemicals, get structure visualizations in searches and "explore image to structure conversion," according to the companies' press release.
ChemAxon and Linguamatics are among many tech firms that are getting money from Eurostars, a joint effort between EUREKA and the EU Seventh Framework Program to help small- to medium-sized companies conduct R&D to advance new products to market.
- here's the release
- see GenomeWeb's article