Ignet 2.0 and Vignet: An Ontology-Driven Web Platform for Biomedical Gene Interaction Discovery and Visualization

Abstract

BackgroundThe expansion of biomedical literature demands systematic ontology-guided discovery of gene interactions, vaccine mechanisms, drug associations, and adverse events. Existing platforms such as STRING, DisGeNET, and PubTator fall short of providing a unified, freely accessible system that integrates ontology-based semantic interaction classification, vaccine-focused heterogeneous network construction, and Artificial Intelligence-assisted evidence retrieval. ResultsIgnet 2.0 and Vignet are freely accessible dual-platform systems that combine PubMed literature mining, BioBERT-based interaction scoring for millions of gene-gene co-occurrence pairs and integrate three biomedical ontologies and one curated drug resource, Interaction Network Ontology (INO), Vaccine Ontology (VO), Human Disease Ontology (HDO), and DrugBank. Ignet 2.0 supports gene interaction discovery, gene set enrichment retrieval of BioBERT-scored GenePair evidence, and AI-assisted summarization through BioSummarAI. Vignet extends these features with VO-guided Vaccine Exploration, VacPair interaction scoring, and the creation of vaccine, gene, drug, and disease networks in VacNet. A public Representational State Transfer Application Programming Interface (REST API) and Model Context Protocol (MCP) endpoint enable real-time integration, fostering trust in biomedical knowledge discovery. ConclusionIgnet 2.0 and Vignet are scalable, ontology-guided biomedical knowledge platforms that facilitate evidence-based gene interaction analysis, vaccine-focused semantic exploration, and AI-assisted knowledge discovery. Their real-time PubMed data integration ensures up-to-date insights; however, users should consider validation processes and potential lags in incorporating the latest experimental data, which may affect the reliability of immediate data. AvailabilityIgnet 2.0: https://ignet.org/ignet; Vignet: https://ignet.org/vignet/