BAOSearch : A Semantic Web Application for Biological Screening and Drug Discovery Research

BAOSearch is a semantic web application for querying, browsing and downloading biological screening data relevant for drug discovery. We developed a BioAssay Ontology (BAO) in order to formalize the domain of biological screening and annotated large sets of data to make complex and diverse life science data accessible to researchers via simple queries. Our software architecture and BAO will also enable the integration with orthogonal life science databases (such as pathways and disease) and ultimately facilitate the discovery of new biomedical knowledge. BAOSearch is a multi-tier, web-based, AJAX-enabled application written primarily in Java and built following a Restful web services paradigm. The paper gives an overview of the architecture, the methods used and gives some examples of the types of queries that BAOSearch enables.