Welcoming Our New Portfolio Company
Bioz
ONE WORLD is excited to announce our newest portfolio company, Bioz. As an AI search engine, Bioz is designed to speed up drug discovery and disease cure research by organizing hundreds of millions of pages of scientific papers. Led by CEO and Co-founder Daniel Levitt, as well as Chief Scientific Officer and Co-founder Karin Lachmi, Bioz is used by over 2.5M researchers.
Having earned her Ph.D in brain cancer from Tel Aviv University and working as a neuroscientist researcher at Stanford, Dr. Karin Lachmi found it difficult to search through the millions of scientific papers on the internet. Following up on data from one article with a new article was nearly impossible with the amount of information that was uploaded everyday, as Lachmi detailed in a 2017 article published by The Business Journals.
Daniel Levitt, CEO and Co-Founder
In order to end the lack of efficiency in online medical research, Lachmi teamed up with Levitt, an entrepreneur, to create an AI search engine that processes key information in order to effectively organize online research papers.
Looking at Bioz in relation to the current health crisis brought on by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the company published a press release in July 2020, detailing their role in vaccine research development. Providing a platform to streamline research during the public health crisis that we have all been experiencing, the work done by Bioz is particularly relevant. In addition to their commitment to vaccine research development during the pandemic, Bioz also granted free access to their platform for all biopharma and academic researchers, as detailed in a press release from the early weeks of the crisis.
In order to celebrate our newest portfolio company, we spoke with Levitt and Lachmi about the story behind Bioz and how the AI search engine is revolutionizing medical research.
Why did you start Bioz? What is your story?
Bioz was started in 2013, when our founder and chief scientific officer, Dr. Karin Lachmi, a former researcher at Stanford University, was driven to make it easier for life scientists to identify and procure optimal reagents (biologicals and chemicals) and tools (instruments and equipment) for their experiments.
How do you think Bioz is going to change research surrounding drug discovery and finding disease cures?
Bioz is accelerating the pace of drug discovery and research towards finding cures for diseases. By guiding scientists towards the best reagents and tools for their research Bioz is increasing the rate of success of life science experiments that are performed by scientists in biopharma and academia. A higher rate of experimentation success not only accelerates discovery, but also increases research reproducibility.
What is your vision for the future of Bioz?
Bioz is driving towards being the industry standard for recommending and rating all products and services that are used by life science researchers globally in academia and biopharma settings, while also facilitating procurement via the Bioz one-stop-shop marketplace.
How do you see the future of drug discovery and disease cure research changing, particularly after the past year?
COVID-19 has refocused the world's attention on the importance of life science research, which will result in greater government and foundation funding being allocated to research, increased venture funding for life science startups, and increased interest in following a career in life science research.
What advice do you have for other social entrepreneurs tackling similarly complex issues?
Life science ventures embody true purpose, and have great impact on our world. While such ventures often require significant effort to reach product-market fit, they offer the opportunity to build a leadership position in the market.
Karin Lachmi, CSO and Co-Founder
Daniel Levitt, CEO and Co-Founder