GRANATUM

In the framework of the EU-funded project GRANATUM Fraunhofer FIT has realized a web portal that socially connects biomedical researchers across national boundaries and eases scientific exchange. The public GRANATUM IT platform provides access to information about cancer research and established pharmaceutical agents from 83 global data sources in an integrated, semantically interlinked manner.

Researchers can us the website to socially interact and cooperate, build and share hypotheses, search databases, design and execute in-silico experiments to screen potential chemoprevention drugs ahead of in-vitro and in-vivo test.

The European GRANATUM project started in 2011 and its mission was to build a collaboration platform for biomedical researchers in the field of cancer drug research. Version 1.0 of this web portal is now online. It provides access to the globally available biomedical knowledge and data resources that the scientists need to prepare complex experiments to identify novel agents for cancer prevention and to design experimental studies. This will accelerate research and reduce its costs.

Scientists from universities, research institutes and pharmaceutical companies are invited to use the GRANATUM Platform to share their knowledge and cooperatively generate expertise and experimental data, thus producing research results faster. Based on the GRANATUM Biomedical Semantic Model researchers can semantically annotate, manage and access biomedical resources, e.g. public databases, digital libraries and archives, online communities and discussions.

A Scientific Workflow Management System for biomedical experts provides a set of advanced tools to create, update, store, and share in-silico modeling experiments for the discovery of new chemopreventive agents.

The GRANATUM Portal is based on the BSCW Shared Workspace System developed by Fraunhofer FIT and OrbiTeam Software GmbH & Co. KG (www.bscw.de).

It was designed and built in the GRANATUM project as "A Social Collaborative Working Space Semantically Interlinking Biomedical Researchers, Knowledge And Data For The Design And Execution Of In-Silico Models And Experiments In Cancer Chemoprevention", partially funded by the European Commission. The GRANATUM consortium includes seven partners: National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG-DERI), Cybion Srl. (Italy), Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (Greece), University of Cyprus (UCY/CBC and UCY/CS), German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), and UBITECH (Greece), and Fraunhofer FIT acting as project coordinator.