Discovery · Flagship programme
CIRRA — circRNA Reasoning and Research Agent.
An intelligent research platform dedicated to circular RNA biomarker discovery. Its purpose is not simply to analyse datasets — it is to reason through scientific evidence.
CIRRA is the clearest manifestation of ASR Lab's scientific vision — a programme within the institution, not the institution itself.
Capabilities
Reasoning across the full arc of discovery.
From candidate ranking to reproducible reporting, CIRRA supports each step scientists take between observation and validated conclusion.
circRNA candidate ranking
Prioritise circular RNA candidates by biological and statistical relevance.
Biomarker prioritisation
Surface the biomarkers most likely to warrant experimental validation.
Literature synthesis
Aggregate and reconcile evidence across the published record.
Biological pathway reasoning
Situate candidates within known regulatory and disease pathways.
Protocol recommendation
Recommend wet-lab protocols suited to a given candidate and context.
Validation guidance
Guide the design of wet-laboratory validation experiments.
Explainable recommendations
Present each conclusion alongside the evidence that supports it.
Reproducible reporting
Generate reports that others can inspect and reproduce.
Approach
Evidence in, reasoning out.
CIRRA aggregates evidence across the published record, structured biological knowledge, and a client's own transcriptomic data. It then reasons over that evidence to explain why a circRNA candidate deserves attention.
Every recommendation is presented alongside the evidence that supports it, so scientists can inspect, question, and reproduce each conclusion.
Architecture
Five layers, one continuous evidence trail.
Data flows from secure ingestion through reasoning and knowledge to reproducible reporting, with governance applied across every layer.
Ingestion
Secure intake of transcriptomic and molecular datasets with provenance tracking.
Reasoning engine
Evidence aggregation and explainable inference over biological data.
Knowledge layer
Curated pathways, literature, and structured biological knowledge.
Governance & security
Encryption, access control, and jurisdiction-aware data governance.
Reporting
Reproducible, inspectable reports and evidence trails.
Clients retain ownership of their data. Infrastructure is designed to support GDPR, NDPR, and HIPAA-aligned workflows, with encryption, access control, and provenance tracking throughout.
Comparison
How CIRRA differs.
CIRRA is not a general-purpose analytics tool, nor a manual workflow. It is a domain-specific reasoning platform.
| Capability | CIRRA | Generic analytics | Manual workflow |
|---|---|---|---|
| Explainable recommendations | |||
| circRNA-specific reasoning | |||
| Literature evidence synthesis | |||
| Reproducible reporting | |||
| Client retains data ownership | |||
| Wet-lab validation guidance |
Long-term scientific roadmap
A deliberate progression toward scientific infrastructure.
CIRRA is the beginning of a longer trajectory. Each stage builds on demonstrated scientific capability rather than ambition alone.
- 01Stage OneActive
Computational reasoning for circRNA
Reasoning over circular RNA evidence — the current focus.
- 02Stage TwoNext
Expansion across RNA molecules
Extending reasoning to miRNA, lncRNA, mRNA and further transcriptomic entities.
- 03Stage ThreePlanned
Integrated multi-omics reasoning
Reasoning across combined molecular data types.
- 04Stage FourPlanned
Proprietary biomarker discovery
Discovering novel biomarkers through the platform.
- 05Stage FivePlanned
Clinical diagnostics
Translating discoveries into diagnostic applications.
- 06Stage SixPlanned
Robotics-assisted laboratory automation
Automation that follows scientific understanding.
- 07Stage SevenPlanned
Therapeutic discovery
Extending the platform toward therapeutic candidates.
- 08Stage EightHorizon
Scientific infrastructure company
Becoming enduring infrastructure for molecular science.
For developers
API & SDK access.
Programmatic access
A documented API for submitting datasets and retrieving ranked, explainable results.
SDK (planned)
Client libraries for common scientific computing environments to integrate CIRRA into existing pipelines.
Data ownership
Your data remains yours. Access is scoped, auditable, and revocable.
Reproducible outputs
Every result carries the evidence and parameters needed to reproduce it.
Explore the published work.
Read our peer-reviewed articles and preprints on circRNA reasoning and biomarker discovery.