Cambridge, Mass.— Plex Research, a biotechnology company leveraging autonomous artificial intelligence (AI) for drug discovery, has announced a new collaboration with Ginkgo Bioworks’ Ginkgo Datapoints service. The partnership aims to harness the Plex AI Platform to analyze a large-scale perturbation response profiling dataset, potentially uncovering novel disease mechanisms and new therapeutic applications for existing drugs.
The joint effort centers around Ginkgo Datapoints’ GDPx2 dataset—a comprehensive 4-terabyte collection of transcriptomic data generated using DRUG-seq, a miniaturized, ultra-high throughput gene expression assay. The dataset includes data from four human primary cell types, 85 compound treatments, six dosage levels, and four replicates, offering a rich resource to explore compound-induced genetic responses.
By applying its AI-driven analytics to this expansive dataset, Plex Research aims to identify hidden patterns in how drugs interact with genes, cells, and disease pathways—insights that could be critical for drug repurposing and refining drug safety and efficacy profiles.
“The combination of high-quality, large-scale transcriptomic data from Ginkgo and the innovative analytical capabilities of the Plex AI Platform can yield clinically meaningful insights into disease biology and treatment strategies,” said John Androsavich, Ph.D., General Manager of Ginkgo Datapoints.
“This represents a shift in how biological research is conducted, moving toward faster, context-rich, data-driven discovery.”
Plex’s platform distinguishes itself with a “focal graph” approach to AI, offering transparency and traceability—each discovery is explicitly linked to experimental evidence, enabling rigorous scientific validation and follow-up.
“AI is proving transformative for discovering novel uses of existing treatments that can reach patients faster,” said Doug Selinger, Ph.D., CEO and co-founder of Plex Research.
“Our unique approach solves problems that traditional machine learning struggles with, and we’re excited to explore the insights that Ginkgo’s dataset can help unlock.”
The partnership reflects a growing trend in biotech to integrate AI with high-throughput biological data, aiming to accelerate the identification of new therapeutic opportunities across a range of diseases.
Results from the collaboration are expected to generate testable hypotheses and potential new uses for existing compounds, with findings to be shared with the broader scientific community in future publications.
