Toronto, CANADA, October 7, 2021 — With the addition of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products and sequences to its AI-powered platform, BenchSci, an emerging global leader in machine learning applications for novel medicine development, is empowering scientists to more rapidly discover how genes influence health and disease. 

PCR is a laboratory technique that enables scientists to make copies of a particular region of DNA to better understand a specific gene function. It’s lauded as one of the most crucial advancements in molecular biology. 

“The BenchSci platform’s advanced technology surfaces evidence of a PCR product or sequences’ successful utilization in experiments similar to a scientist's own,” says Casandra Mangroo, BenchSci’s SVP of Product and Science. “As a result, scientists can recoup time that would have otherwise been spent optimizing and testing PCR products and sequences before running an experiment.” 

With BenchSci, scientists can now leverage data on over 21.8 million conventional and real-time PCR primers and probes, and their use in 807,000 published experiments, to design more successful research projects.

In addition to identifying the most appropriate sequences, a common challenge for scientists when designing real-time PCR experiments is identifying a new, appropriate housekeeping gene when switching from one context to another. Scientists often consult the published literature to identify which housekeeping genes were used within similar experiments, trying to avoid a lengthy trial and error process.

BenchSci’s proprietary machine learning models detect when a gene has been used as a housekeeping gene, enabling scientists to:

  • Avoid manual literature reviews and optimization tests—scientists apply experimental context filters to quickly surface relevant experimental evidence from the published literature
  • Search by treatment or procedure to generate a shortlist of genes successfully utilized as housekeeping genes within the desired context
  • Identify which genes have been used the most often as housekeeping genes within similar experiments

In addition to PCR reagent data, the BenchSci platform currently includes data on antibodies, proteins, cell products, CRISPR reagents, RNAi reagents, and animal models.

For more BenchSci updates, visit our News page.

About BenchSci

BenchSci’s vision is to bring novel medicine to patients 50% faster by 2025. We’re achieving it by empowering scientists with the world’s most advanced biomedical artificial intelligence to run more successful experiments. Backed by F-Prime, Gradient Ventures (Google’s AI fund), and Inovia Capital, our platform accelerates science at 15 top-20 pharmaceutical companies and over 4,300 leading research centers worldwide. We’re a remote-first, CIX Top 10 Growth company, certified Great Place to Work®, and top-ranked company on Glassdoor. Learn more at www.benchsci.com.

For more information, please contact Marie Cook at mcook@benchsci.com.