drug discovery Archives - Medical Design Sourcing

From AI transformers to computer-based reasoning to rethinking drug design: AI pioneers discuss the future

Jensen Huang at GTC

In a packed panel discussion at GTC, moderated by NVIDIA Founder and CEO Jensen Huang, the architects of the groundbreaking transformer model gathered to explore their creation’s potential. The panel featured seven of the eight authors of the seminal “Attention Is All You Need Paper” paper, which introduced transformers – a type of neural network designed to handle sequential data, like text or time series, in a way that allows for much more parallel processing than previous architectures like recurrent neural networks (RNNs). Transformers accomplish this through a mechanism called “attention,” which enables the model to differentially weigh the importance of different parts of the input data.

The transformer architecture powers large language models like GPT-4 and has ignited widespread interest in AI applications across industries including in biology, wher…

Creating chemical diversity with flow chemistry

[Orb Pilot Scale up Reactor: Image from Syrris]

Flow chemistry techniques are increasingly being used in drug discovery to provide cost-effective access to a wide range of structurally diverse small molecule analogs, as well as access to previously underused or inaccessible chemistries. There are several ways that this powerful technique can be used to increase structural diversity when building candidate molecules, including linear progression from diverse starting materials, multicomponent reactions around core structural motifs, synthesis of uncommon low diversity starting material sub-sets, and convergent synthesis approaches. The diversity of the starting components is a key consideration when deciding the most suitable strategy for each specific application, but the development of automated, modular flow chemistry systems has made all these approaches far easier to achieve. Here we outline the various methods and…

NVIDIA exec on how ‘NIMs’ can help biopharma navigate the challenges of deploying generative AI

[Image courtesy of Nvidia]

The buzz surrounding generative AI may be undeniable, but its real-world impact on heavily-regulated sectors like drug discovery continues to evolve. Consequently, most drug candidates, circa 90%, continue to fail. Kimberly Powell, vice president of Healthcare at NVIDIA, believes that a new microservices-based offering known as NIMs (NVIDIA Inference Microservices) could help pharma firms navigate this maze. “NIMs were built for the healthcare space, which has very private data,” Powell explained. Healthcare companies, including drug developers, “don’t always want to go to a cloud service. They want to do it in their own environment. We want to give them that capability,” she added.

To date, NVIDIA is offering about two dozen new healthcare microservices with more to follow.

NIMs intend to help scale AI deployment across infrastructures

NIMs, which …

New pharma and biotech manufacturing facilities and expansions announced worldwide for 2024

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The pharma and biotech sectors continue to rapidly transform in response to rising demand for innovative therapies. While less fortunate players are shedding jobs, in 2024, major players like AbbVie, AGC Biologics, and Amgen are investing heavily in new manufacturing facilities worldwide, from Singapore to Japan and the U.S. Companies expanding in North Carolina, Ohio, and Iceland signal a push to make innovative medicines and advanced therapies more accessible globally.

The map below shows select new plant openings and expansions announced in 2024, with 8 in North America and 15 in other regions

North America United States Amgen opened a new AI-enabled biomanufacturing facility in New Albany, Ohio, employing roughly 400 people. The $365 million investment features automation, AI, and data-driven manufacturing processes. Amgen also plans to advance drug discovery using AI models at deC…

Pushing the frontier of drug discovery with the world’s most powerful supercomputer

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Frontier supercomputer. [Credit: ORNL]

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Frontier, the world’s first exascale supercomputer with its dizzying 1.1 exaflop speed, is a game-changer for scientific domains ranging from drug discovery to material science and oceanography. The computer holds the top spot on the TOP500 list, an independent ranking of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. “It’s like having a million laptops going into one core,” says Niven R. Narain, Ph.D., CEO of the biopharmaceutical company BPGbio. The company has forged an exclusive partnership with Oak Ridge that enables them to harness the staggering power of Frontier for drug discovery. “Things that historically would have taken us six to nine months to process, it’s like nine hours,” Narain said.

Access to Frontier “changed our company overnight,” Narain said. With…

When will drug development have its ChatGPT moment? Inside ambitious AI initiatives at Sanofi and Medable

In episode 4 of Ai Meets Life Sci, Kayleen Brown, managing editor at DeviceTalks and Brian Buntz, pharma and biotech editor, chat with Helen Merianos, Ph.D., head of R+D portfolio strategy at Sanofi and Michelle Longmire, MD, CEO of Medable. The focus? The two-fold application of AI in their respective companies’ technologies, both for scientific advancement and business productivity, were central themes. Sanofi is applying AI across the company, encouraging an inquisitive culture around product development. AI also aids in making more data-driven investments across various domains. Medable is tapping AI to build a culture of invention as decentralized clinical trials become more operationalized and scalable.

Tune in and subscribe to AI Meets Life Sci on all major podcast channels and follow youtube.com/@DeviceTalks or AI Meets Life Sci YouTube Podcast to ensure you never miss an episode.

Sanofi embraces AI for improved decision-making

In a June 2023 press rele…

Supercomputer-based Bayesian approach to AI pays dividends for BPGbio

In an AI hype-filled biopharma industry, one company is taking a back-to-basics yet supercomputer-powered approach — using Bayesian analysis on massive patient datasets to guide drug discovery. The company crunches trillions of data points per patient. “It’s massive, which is why we use a supercomputer,” said Niven R. Narain, Ph.D., BPGbio CEO. The company has an exclusive relationship with Oak Ridge National Labs, using its Frontier supercomputer to perform complex computational tasks, including the analysis of multi-omics data, the development of predictive models, and the simulation of biological systems. Frontier is hailed as the world’s first exascale supercomputer, meaning it can perform more than 1 quintillion calculations per second.

BPGbio’s AI-powered platform, known as NAi Interrogative Biology, illustrates its approach to drug and diagnostic discovery. The platform includes a lmassive biobank of multi-omi…

Moving beyond buzzwords: When will a rising AI tide lift all Big Pharma boats?

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For all of the talk about AI in drug discovery and development, few Big Pharmas are putting up big bucks in AI spending. A CRB survey from late 2023 painted a conservative picture: about half of drug developers planned on allocating between $1 and $10 million for data and AI projects over the next two years. A mere 3% reported budgeting more than $50 million. No companies surveyed had budgeted more than $100 million.

By contrast, Microsoft has invested more than $10 billion into OpenAI alone. Amazon invested $4 billion into Anthropic for minority ownership and a board seat, while Google invested $2 billion plus potentially hundreds of millions more into Anthropic and Character AI for AI research and development. In early 2023, IDC projected that cumulative AI spending would reach $154 billion by the end of the year — 27% higher than a year earlier.

While a growing number of pharma and…

Quantum promises a bright future for the pharma industry

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Quantum computing technology continues to advance closer to an everyday reality. While the potential applications of quantum in certain sectors are more speculative, the pharmaceutical industry is poised to be transformed by quantum technology.This sector is likely to be the fastest to unlock the benefits of quantum computing, once the technology is fully realized. But how ready are companies in this sector for this revolution, and what changes can we expect?

The next generation of molecular modelling

The key to discovering new drugs involves testing and understanding the reactions between different materials and catalysts. Rather than relying solely on experiments in labs, scientists today also use computer aided drug design and molecular modellng to simulate these interactions and accelerate the discovery of new compounds.

However, even today’s most powerful supercomputers…

Zai Lab’s unified approach to tackling cancer, autoimmune, and neurological diseases

Zai Lab is a global biopharmaceutical company founded in 2014 and based in China and the U.S.. Led by Chairperson and CEO Dr. Samantha Du, the company now has more than 2,000 employees internationally.

Focusing on developing novel therapies for oncology, autoimmune disorders, infectious diseases, and neurological disorders, it has built a broad pipeline of late-stage drug candidates, five of which have been approved and launched in China. The company also has internal research and development capabilities to advance its discovery pipeline.

The company is strategically partnering with prominent biopharma organizations such as Amgen, GSK, Seagen, BMS, Mirati and Deciphera. Concurrently, Zai Lab is building a proprietary pipeline across therapeutic areas such asoncology, autoimmune disorders, infectious diseases, and neuroscience.

In this email Q&A, we heard from Josh Smiley, president and chief operating officer of Zai Lab, and Dr. Harald Reinhart, pre…

Genmab’s data-driven strategies speed up drug commercialization

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Genmab’s senior vice president, global head of data science and AI, Hisham Hamadeh, describes the company’s journey to becoming “a data-driven decision-making company.” In one sense, there is little choice but to do so. “We’re swimming in data like never before. We’ve seen the volumes of data, the ability to compute on that data, and the type of algorithms that are emerging,” he said.

The initiative has the firm support of the company’s CEO Jan G. J. van de Winkel, who expects AI to help enhance R&D efficiency in the coming years. Already, the company has succeeded in winning FDA approval for the antibody epcoritamab in lymphoma within five years after the first patient was dosed. The approval timeline was “a world record,” van de Winkel told Medwatch, adding that the company believes its investments in data science will unlock further breakthrou…

50 of the best-funded biotechs of 2023

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As the year draws to a close, it is clear that molecular science and diagnostics is the hottest funding area in the biotech industry. In an analysis of 50 of the best-funded biotechs of 2023 focused on human health, molecular and science and diagnostics startups collectively attracting roughly $945 million, dwarfing the figures in other segments. The next popular two niches, gene therapies and oncology, had average funding levels of approximately $245 million and $170 million, respectively. While AI has received a significant amount of attention this year, biotechs specializing in that field garnered an average funding of only about $66 million. Outside of the life sciences, startups with a broader focus on AI raised a cumulative average of $202.47 million, based on an analysis of close to 1000 companies.

Caris Life Sciences has raised nearly $1.7B to date

In terms of best-funded companies overall,…