Patent ID: 11880375
Assignee: BENEVOLENTAI TECHNOLOGY LIMITED
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 9:
10. A computer-implemented method of searching a relationship tree to output biological entities of interest for drug discovery, the method comprising:
receiving a search term with a user input device, the search term comprising a representation of a biological entity, wherein the biological entity is one or more of a disease, a gene, a protein, a drug, a biological pathway, or a biological process;
querying an association database storing known associations between biological entities to determine which biological entities of a set of biological entities have a known association with the biological entity of the search term, wherein (a) the set of biological entities comprises biological entities of the same biological entity type that are related to each other by parent-child relationships in a hierarchical relationship tree, (b) the biological entity type comprises one of: diseases, genes, proteins, drugs, biological pathways, or biological processes, (c) the biological entity type of the set of biological entities differs from the biological entity type of the search term, (d) the biological entities of the set that are determined as having a known association are results and those not having a known association are non-results, and (e) a known association comprises an association other than being related by a parent-child relationship in the hierarchical relationship tree;
accessing a relationship tree database storing the hierarchical relationship tree to determine biological entities of interest within the hierarchical relationship tree by firstly identifying candidate non-results that have one or more results within a threshold tree traversal distance of the non-result in the relationship tree and secondly calculating a score for each candidate non-result using a function, where the function provides a higher score based on one or both of (1) the more results there are within the threshold tree traversal distance for the candidate non-result, and (2) the shorter a tree traversal distance in the relationship tree from the candidate non-result to a result within the boundary; determining candidate non-results having a score equal to or above a threshold score as biological entities of interest; and
rendering on a display device a visualisation of the hierarchical relationship tree and a visual indication identifying each biological entity of interest within the relationship tree.