Our Mission
Candle Fire begins from a simple, self-evident truth: patients cannot wait. Neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS remain among the hardest problems in medicine. Decades of research have produced hard-won insight, yet few effective treatments, and the evidence is scattered across papers, databases, and trials faster than any one person can read.
As big data and AI mature, we see a chance to help. Our mission is to build the data infrastructure that lets physicians and researchers find, connect, and question that evidence faster, so their time goes to science and to patients rather than to searching.
We are clear-eyed about where we stand. In this field, failure is the norm, not the exception. Our efforts may turn out to be Sisyphus's boulder, pushed uphill only to roll back down. We push it anyway. A candle does not light the whole night, but it lets the next person see a little further.
We are not a registered nonprofit, and we are not here for profit. We exist to serve the mission of physicians and the quality of life of patients.
Our Values
Optimistic and foolish
We know the odds. Most attempts at neurodegenerative disease have failed, and ours may too. We choose to be optimistic anyway, and foolish enough to start before we are sure it will work.
Patients cannot wait
ALS moves faster than research timelines. Every week we save a researcher or a physician is a week that matters to someone. We ship early, learn quickly, and fix what we get wrong.
Integrity of science and engineering
Every answer we surface should trace back to its evidence. We would rather say "we don't know" than present a confident guess. Sound engineering is how we earn trust: tested, reproducible, and honest about limits.
Service mindset
We build for physicians, researchers, and patients, not for ourselves. Their questions set our roadmap, and the measure of our work is whether it is actually useful to them.
The Project
Candle Fire is a biomedical knowledge graph for ALS research. It connects disease mechanisms, gene targets, compounds, and clinical trials drawn from the research literature, so researchers and physicians can navigate the evidence faster.
On top of the graph, Candle Fire lets you ask questions in plain language and get answers grounded in the literature, with citations back to the source papers, so every claim can be checked rather than taken on faith.
Candle Fire is an early, evolving project. It is a research aid, not a source of medical advice.