The National University of Ireland, Galway, has partnered with several research institutes to launch a new drug discovery website that aims to be a 'Facebook for researchers' and accelerate cancer drug research.

Granatum.org will bring together biomedical researchers from pharma, universities and research institutes and make it easier for them to interact and co-operate.

The site provides access to the biomedical knowledge and data resources needed to prepare complex experiments to identify novel agents for cancer prevention and to design experimental studies.

By helping researchers to build and share hypotheses, search databases, and design and execute in-silico (via computer simulation) experiments, it is hoped that potential chemoprevention drugs can be better screened ahead of testing. This, in turn, should speed up cancer research and even reduce costs.

Granatum is partially funded by the European Commission and its other partners include Cybion Srl, Italy; the German Cancer Research Center; and Fraunhofer FIT. At present, the website has information from 83 global data sources.