Unlocking Drug Discovery with SOAR's Innovative Resource

Scientists at Northwestern University have developed a large open-access database to support early-stage drug development. The tool is designed to help researchers better understand diseases and identify potential treatments, potentially saving months of work.

The platform, called SOAR (Spatial transcriptOmics Analysis Resource), allows scientists to explore how genes behave in different parts of the body. It also helps them study how cells communicate and identify new drug targets.

Spatial transcriptomics is a method that shows which genes are active in specific areas of a tissue. This provides a broad view of cell interactions. SOAR is the first comprehensive spatial transcriptomics resource built to support drug discovery efforts.

It is too expensive and too time-consuming to push thousands of potential drug candidates to the preclinical study and clinical trials. We need to pick the right leads and then push them to downstream studies. This resource will help prioritize that.

Yuan Luo, Study Corresponding Author, Northwestern University

The research using the SOAR platform was published in Science Advances on June 11, 2025. According to Luo, some pharmaceutical companies are already exploring its use in their research.

Give Researchers a ‘molecular GPS’

SOAR brings together data from 441 spatial transcriptomics datasets collected by 19 organizations. It includes detailed maps of gene activity across 3,461 tissue samples, representing 13 species (from humans to zebrafish) and 42 different tissue types.

Luo described the dataset as a “molecular GPS.” It helps researchers identify specific biological processes that could be targeted for treatment by showing where genes are active or inactive in tissue and how certain chemicals affect cells.

Studying IBD to Breast Cancer

Luo explained that in many diseases, the problem is not just the cell activity itself, but where that activity occurs.

Luo added, “If immune cells are attacking normal cells in healthy tissue, that is really bad because that could lead to inflammatory diseases, such as irritable bowel disease. Or if the immune cells are not attacking cancer cells in a tumor microenvironment, that is really a bad thing because it lets the cancer grow.. SOAR helps examine the variability and interactions to give researchers the understanding of what mechanism is going on so they can better understand what is underlining the disease.”