October update: Celebrating 10 Years of Open Targets, in vitro T cell exhaustion model, 24.09 Platform release

This week we celebrated 10 years of Open Targets on the Wellcome Genome Campus. My personal favourite was a panel discussion featuring Open Targets’ founders (but the cake and cupcakes—pictured above—were a close second).

Also this month, two Open Targets preprints were published from Annie Speak’s team and the Open Targets core team, the 24.09 Platform update was released and features a new associations filtering feature, Maria Falaguera won a prize at EuroQSAR for her presentation of her work at Open Targets, and we were featured in a review of open science partnerships.

Coming down from the sugar high,

Helena

The consortium got together this week to celebrate our milestone, and reflect on the past decade of Open Targets science and the impact of this work.

We’re keen to hear from you about how Open Targets has impacted your own work, please let us know by commenting on this post, emailing in, or posting on the Open Targets Community.

Preprint: an in-vitro model of T cell exhaustion

Andrea Manrique Rincón and the team led by Annie Speak created an in vitro model of T cell exhaustion to help develop cancer immunotherapies.

New, revolutionary cancer therapies boost the immune system to fight cancer cells, but this is hindered by T cell exhaustion, and treatments don't work for all patients. The ability to study these T cells and find ways to reinvigorate them is key to improving cancer immunotherapies.

Manrique-Rincon et al. (2024) Stimulating CD8 T Cell Exhaustion: A Comprehensive Approach. bioRxiv

In a preprint released last month, front-end lead Carlos Cruz-Castillo and the core team describe the work that enables the Associations on the Fly view in the Open Targets Platform.

This work was first released to the Platform a year ago, and has led to many significant, user-led improvements to the Platform interface.

Cruz-Castillo et al. (2024) Associations on the Fly, a new feature aiming to facilitate exploration of the Open Targets Platform evidence. bioRxiv

In addition to our regular data updates, the 24.09 Platform release integrated target phenotypes routinely tested in secondary pharmacology screening as part of our safety assessments, and FinnGen burden curation as part of our gene burden data.

Of note, you now have the ability to apply filters to results on associations pages. For example, targets can be filtered based on their subcellular location, biological process or pathway, target class, and tractability assessment, amongst other options.

We have introduced this as a beta feature and are particularly interested in hearing your feedback. Find out about all the updates in this release on the blog.

Join the club! Open Targets was featured in a review characterising the different types of Open Science Partnerships. The team at the The Danish Centre for Studies in Research and Research Policy led by Maria Theresa Norn, uses Open Targets as an example of “The Club” archetype.

The research suggests how Open Science Partnerships can best be designed to meet their goals, and provides a framework to understand their impact.

Norn et al. (2024) Archetypes of Open Science Partnerships: connecting aims and means in open biomedical research collaborations. Humanit Soc Sci Commun (Open Access)

Interested in joining Open Targets?

We’re not currently recruiting, but keep an eye on our jobs page for all our opportunities.

I’d love to know what you think of this newsletter — comment on this post or let me know at outreach@opentargets.org!

— Helena, Open Targets Communications Lead