TargetTri

Innovating health interventions with evidence-based decision-making

Powered by custom-tuned large language models, expert knowledge and mined data, TargetTri uncovers crucial insights for assessing health outcomes and safety risks of food and drug interventions

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Query
drugs, nutrients or their interacting proteins
Explore
health, physiology, pathology, disease, organ
  • Evidence-based insights
  • Hypothesis generation
  • Mechanism of action
  • Health benefits
  • Safety risks

Learn more about what TargetTri can do for you in drug discovery or nutritional research.
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TargetTri platform is free for academic use. For commercial access please contact us

Efficient target profiling and discovery

Deciding which drug target to push forward in the discovery of innovative therapies requires comprehensive analyses of large amounts of biomedical data, that are scattered and unstructured. The TargetTri platform tackles this issue with expert knowledge and data-driven approaches, allowing you to spend your time on strategic decision making rather than tedious data collection.

TargetTri provides interactive, target-centric insights in:

  • Therapeutic potential
  • On-target toxicity
  • Drug information

AI-based Target profiling

Stay updated and on top of your target's role in health and disease. With AI-powered text-mining and data-mining, data interpretation has never been easier than with the TargetTri platform.

Target Safety

Prevent drug target failures early by uncovering on-target safety liabilities in discovery. We offer expert-based Target Safety Assessments performed by our multi-disciplinary team.

Target Discovery

Leverage the power of data-integration. Our integrated pipeline of text-mining, network biology and transcriptomics offers a validated approach for target identification and evaluation.

TargetTri

Product innovation, personalized nutrition and nutrient discovery

Nutrition forms the fundament of good health. Understanding how food components boost health and contribute to the prevention, treatment and management of disease is essential for the development and innovation of food-based health interventions. TargetTri contributes to this goal by providing evidence-based insights in the relationships between nutrients, pathways and health-related effects. This is achieved by knowledge and data-driven text-mining approaches which are currently offered as an off-line service. A nutrient-centric web interface is under construction.

TargetTri provides insights in nutrient – health effects relations via:

  • Nutrient-centric queries
  • Health-centric queries
  • Pathway-centric queries

In addition, population-based information can be used to support personalized nutrition approaches.

About us

Mission

TargetTri is a TNO platform developed in collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry. Our aim is to facilitate and accelerate the discovery and development of new entities that can effectively prevent, halt or reverse disease.

Vision

Significant advances in health research can only be made by understanding health and disease on a molecular level. We integrate our expert knowledge with state-of-the art technologies to understand how protein modulation affects our health. In collaboration with partners, we use this information to support drug discovery efforts.

TargetTri team

Jennifer McCormack-Venhorst
Founder / Scientific lead
Eugene van Someren
Consultant
Gino Kalkman
Team lead / NLP expert
Marlies Otto
Project manager / Quality manager
Erik Lemcke
Tech lead / DevOps engineer
Jochem de Vries
Software developer / Front-end specialist
Sabina Bijlsma
Database manager
Simon Folkertsma
Business developer

Collaboration

TNO Collaboration

Creating innovations is a matter of working together, and that requires partners. TNO's collaborations take many forms, such as projects on commission, public private partnerships, technology transfer, partnerships via associations and Joint Innovation Centres (JIC's). Interested in finding out how TNO can work with you?
TNO Website (opens in a new tab)

TargetTri collaborations

The TargetTri platform is free for academic use and is offered under a license for commercial use. The platform is also actively being developed to address novel and emerging research needs. We are eager to enter into a collaboration to implement new functionalities, data sources and knowledge that contribute to solving your specific research questions. To enter into collaborations, we receive government funding that covers part of the research through the Research Cooperation Funds (SMO, Samenwerkingsmiddelen Onderzoek) on a yearly basis. The remainder of the funding comes from the partner(s). Interested in exploring how we can join forces to further extend the capabilities of the TargetTri platform?
Contact us

TargetTri projects

  • Oncode Accelerator A Dutch growth fund for innovating and accelerating the development of new cancer therapies to address unmet medical needs. In this project, development of the TargetTri platform focuses on novel approaches for target identification as well as target assessment using automated data interpretation strategies. Learn more (opens in a new tab)
  • Unlocking animal-free innovations from literature A "More knowledge with fewer animals" ZonMw grant to extract preclinical models from literature to support replacement of animal studies by animal-free alternatives. In this project, data-driven text-mining approaches will be used in combination with custom-made ontologies to classify preclinical models, including associated meta data such as the relevant indication, readouts and interventions used.

Products and services

TargetTri platform

We believe in open innovation. Therefore, TargetTri is free for academic use upon registration. To ensure the ongoing development and support of our platform, a license is required for commercial use.

TargetTri has proven its value in Target Safety and Efficacy evaluations within the pharmaceutical industry. Furthermore, It has been successfully applied for target identification in MASH/liver fibrosis (see publication).

Contact us for licensing options

Target Safety Assessments (TSAs)

For companies that want to take our capabilities a step further, we offer a Target Safety Assessment service. Our TSAs fully unburden you in assessing the safety liabilities of your target, taking the mode of action, therapeutic indication and patient population into account. Our reports are offered on various detail levels and provide expert-based, qualitative ranking of adverse effects with supporting evidence.

Want to learn more or make an appointment

Target Discovery

By focusing on a disease instead of a potential drug target, off-line use of TargetTri's data can be leveraged for target discovery. With proprietary AI-based text-mining approaches, causal relations between all human proteins and the disease-relevant effects can be mined. TargetTri for target discovery can be used as a stand-alone service, or in combination with our network and systems biology capabilities. Candidate targets identified by our approach are evaluated in a Target Efficacy Assessment (TEA).

Read more about our approach or get in touch

AI-based Target Profiling

TargetTri platform

Selecting the right target for your next innovative therapy is crucial for the success of the discovery process. Confident decision making requires the analysis of huge amounts of data from data sources and the literature. This is time-consuming, repetitive, and prone to user bias. Even worse, details are easily missed in the sea of information. The TargetTri platform has been developed to overcome these hurdles and ensure you have access to the minute details necessary for accurate decision making.

TargetTri was developed in a close collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry. It combines custom ontologies, data-mining and data integration with text-mining strategies that allow intuitive inspection of target – effect relations on a mechanistic level. Our text-mining integration allows the exploration of target-related effects from either an organ-centric or effect-centric view. Both diseases and physiology are covered. Apart from text-mining, TargetTri provides information on target characteristics, diseases, and genetics. Furthermore, it contains compound and drug information for those targets that have advanced in the discovery pipeline.

Our platform particularly focusses on early preclinical development, supporting exploratory target assessments. It is under continuous further development and we are actively seeking collaborations to tailor the platform to fit your research needs.

TargetTri is free for academic use and requires a license for commercial use. It is also part of several services regarding target evaluations and discovery.

Get in touch to learn more or for licensing options

Target Assessments

Target Safety Assessment (TSA)

Adverse effects are a major cause of drug failures even in late stage development. Having a broad view on the biological and pathological role of your target is essential for the early identification and mitigation of mechanism-based toxicities. We can unburden you in this task, by providing comprehensive views on your target under disease conditions and normal physiology. Taking into account the disease mechanism, envisaged modality, indication and co-morbidities of the patient population, we provide evidence-based risk ranking of all potential liabilities associated with target modulation in an indication-agnostic manner.

For our TSA reports we have developed a TSA approach that harmonizes the best practices in industry. Based on your specific needs, different levels of reporting and customization are offered. We have a strong track record in performing safety assessment for multiple customers and disease indications, spanning diverse modalities including multi-targeted approaches. The assessments are performed by a dedicated team of experts.

Target Efficacy Assessment (TEA)

As a spin-off of our TSAs, we also provide target efficacy assessments to support your target discovery activities. Our approach largely reflects that of our safety assessment. TEAs are offered as a stand-alone service, or as part of our target discovery offerings.

If you are interested in learning more about our target assessments activities, then get in touch

 

Data-driven Target Discovery

Mechanism-based disease pathways

TargetTri's web-based interface allows dynamic, target-centric exploration of candidate targets. Because the platform incorporates all human proteins, the wealth of data captured by TargetTri is also optimally suited for target-agnostic big data analyses. By focusing on a disease instead of a potential drug target, off-line use of TargetTri's data can be leveraged for target discovery. With proprietary AI-based text-mining approaches, causal relations between human proteins and pre-defined, disease-relevant effects can be mined. Ranked proteins can be further evaluated in a Target Efficacy Assessment (TEA).

The disease-centric text-mining results obtained by TargetTri can also be used as the basis of our extended target discovery pipeline. Here, top ranked proteins combined with network biology and (pre)clinical transcriptomics are transformed in a directional and weighted disease network. Machine learning approaches, such as in silico knock-outs, are applied to explore pathological paths and identify key players in the disease network. Our approach was recently applied and validated in vitro during a proof-of-concept for liver fibrosis.

With the multi-disciplinary nature of TNO's Healthy Living (opens in a new tab) , complex research questions can be addressed from different perspectives. TNO integrates in silico capabilities with state-of-the art lab facilities, including organ-a-chip, accelerated mass spectrometry and in vivo disease models. As such, TNO operates as a one-stop-shop for many of our partners.

Contact us for more information.

Publications

Integrating text mining with network models for successful target identification: in vitro validation in MASH-induced liver fibrosis - PubMed

Integrating text mining with network models for successful target identification: in vitro validation in MASH-induced liver fibrosis. Venhorst J, Hanemaaijer R, Dulos R, Caspers MPM, Toet K, Attema J, de Ruiter C, Kalkman G, Rouhani Rankouhi T, de Jong JCBC, Verschuren L.

Front Pharmacol. 202 Sep 27;15:1442752. doi: 10.3389/fphar.2024.1442752. PMID: 39399467; PMCID PMC11466758

This paper describes TNOs integrated target discovery approach, leveraging our TargetTri text-mining, Target evaluation and biological network modeling capabilities in combination with in silico knockout studies. Using metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH)-induced liver fibrosis as example, proof-of-concept of was reached by the identification and in vitro validation of three out of five top-ranked candidate drug targets.

The validated in silico pipeline presents a unique approach for the identification of human-disease-mechanism-relevant drug targets. By including directionality in the network, adherence to physiologically relevant signaling cascades is ensured. At the same time, the inclusion of clinical data boosts its translational power and ensures identification of the most relevant disease pathways. Our pipeline thus provide crucial molecular insights for successful target identification.