Briefly Bio launches to tackle reproducibility crisis with new funding

Briefly Bio has launched with the aim of addressing a significant challenge in preclinical research: the reproducibility crisis. Over 50 percent of endeavours to replicate experiments are failing, leading to an estimated industry loss of over USD $50 billion annually. The newly launched techbio startup offers a solution through software designed to enhance the consistency and clarity of scientific records. As part of this launch, Briefly Bio has also announced the securing of USD $1.2 million in pre-seed funding. The funding round was led by Compound VC and included participation from NP Hard, Tiny VC, and several angel investors specialising in technology and biotechnology.

Co-founded by Dr Katya Putintseva, Harry Rickerby, and Staffan Piledahl, Briefly Bio intends to streamline the intricate details of biological experiments, which are frequently left undocumented, making scientific collaboration arduous. By converting laboratory methods into a consistent format through AI, the platform automatically fills gaps and spots errors, thus allowing scientists to capture the value of every experiment conducted. The founders previously collaborated at LabGenius, where they assisted in building an ML-driven antibody discovery platform.

Harry Rickerby, CEO and co-founder, explained the motivation behind the venture, stating, "Scientific methods are a bit like software code; they are a set of instructions that define how an experiment should be run. The majority of this 'code' is incomplete since writing up each experiment completely takes a huge amount of effort. Now, with LLMs, there's a way to make these methods consistent without imposing on a scientist's workflow. As Github helped software engineers collaborate and build on each other's code, we think Briefly can help scientists and engineers do the same with their experiments."

The team's software aims to create a universally understandable language for experiments, fostering efficiency and transparency in scientific work. Rickerby pointed out that this technology is poised to bring substantial improvements in the efficiency of scientific discovery, highlighting the considerable investments within startups and large pharmaceutical companies aiming to leverage such advances.

Support for the startup has also come from various voices in the scientific community. Dr Gena Nikitin, Founder of Miphic, described Briefly Bio as "the future of foolproof knowledge-sharing between scientists." Dr Maria Anastasina, Wet Lab Head at the Evolutionary and Synthetic Biology Unit at OIST, said: "Briefly has become a core part of our lab's knowledge base and a great help to me in training researchers and lab management." Additionally, Suparna Kumar, a PhD student at Weill Cornell, remarked, "Briefly Bio has become an indispensable part of my lab routine because it helps me save so much time."

Rob Harkness, CTO of Biosero, emphasised the significance of the tool in addressing inefficiencies and high error rates caused by diverse formats in scientific workflows. "We're very excited by what Briefly Bio can offer with their software tools. Inconsistent and incomplete data can compromise research, making it difficult to reproduce experiments and undermining trust in scientific results. Digitalising and automating laboratory operations can address this, but this effort faces challenges of inefficiency and high error rates, primarily due to the diverse formats in which workflows are presented," he stated. Harkness added that Briefly Bio's capability to convert scientific protocols into a structured format boosts workflow integration, efficiency, and data quality.

Shelby Newsad, an investor at Compound, underscored the practical implications of Briefly Bio's software. "The crux of successful science lies in consistent and executable methods. Whereas most bio software companies focus on data and its analysis, Briefly goes upstream to the core problem space of reproducibility via protocols. For the first time in science history, this incentivises scientists to share more of their previously tacit knowledge. The fact that Briefly-made methods can be built and collaborated upon creates unique potential for network effects from their software," Newsad elaborated.