About

An academic research tool for exploring synthetic-lethal cancer drug candidates, built as part of a PhD in cancer bioinformatics.

Joanna Renaut, PhD

Data Scientist & Bioinformatician · Previously University of Sussex

PrecisionSL is a gene-first research tool that surfaces drug candidates identified through the principle of synthetic lethality, a strategy for selectively targeting cancer cells through the partners of mutated tumour suppressors. It brings together mutation data, four synthetic-lethal databases, manually curated approval data, and live clinical-trial information into a single searchable interface. It’s designed for academic researchers exploring drug repurposing and for students learning the field.

The tool was developed from the first chapter of my PhD, which mapped the landscape of precision medicine in cancers of unmet therapeutic need. Other chapters covered shortest-path methods over protein interaction graphs combined with CRISPR dependency data to predict SSL pairs missed by standard databases, and a kinetic model of a metabolic pathway with 178 parameters, fitted using active learning, neural networks, and Bayesian optimisation. Alongside the computational work I ran CRISPR knockouts, siRNA knockdowns, qPCR, and high-content imaging in the lab.

After my PhD I left academia, and am now a Data and AI Mentor in the apprenticeship space.

If you want to get in touch, my LinkedIn is below. If you use the tool, please cite it.

Data sources

The tool aggregates and links data from these public sources:

COSMIC — somatic mutation data
UniProt — gene/protein information (live API)
Reactome — biological pathway data
ClinicalTrials.gov — clinical trial registry (live API)
National Cancer Institute and Drugs@FDA — manually curated approval status
DAVID — pathway enrichment
Synthetic lethality datasets: BioGRID, SLOrth, SynLethDB, MexDrugs

Disclaimer & licence

PrecisionSL is an academic research tool. It is intended for scientific exploration and educational use only. It is not for clinical, diagnostic, or treatment-decision use, and nothing displayed here is medical advice.

Drug, mutation, pathway, and trial data are aggregated from third-party sources under their own terms. In particular, mutation data is derived from COSMIC, which is licensed for academic, non-commercial use; access to this tool implies acceptance of those terms. Inaccuracies in upstream sources may propagate here, so always verify findings against the original source databases before relying on them in research.

Citation

If you use PrecisionSL in your research, please cite it as:

Renaut, J., Mistry, A., George, J., & Pearl, F. M. G. (2026). PrecisionSL: A research tool for synthetic-lethal cancer drug discovery [Computer software]. https://precisionsl.org