Healthcare analytics, AI solutions for biological big data, providing an AI platform for the biotech, life sciences, medical and pharmaceutical industries, as well as for related technological approaches, i.e., curation and text analysis with machine learning and other activities related to AI applications to these industries.
AI will help reduce time for drug development especially in early phase of discovery but eventually help in all phases
Ganhui: for drug regulators might be more amenable to AI in clinical trials; AI may be used differently by clinicians
nonprofit in Philadelphia using AI to repurpose drugs (this site has posted on this and article will be included here)
Ganhui: top challenge of AI in Pharma; rapid evolution of AI and have to have core understanding of your needs and dependencies; realistic view of what can be done; AI has to have iterative learning; also huge vertical challenge meaning how can we allign the use of AI through the healthcare vertical layer chain like clinicians, payers, etc.
Ganhui sees a challenge for health companies to understand how to use AI in business to technology; AI in AI companies is different need than AI in healthcare companies
95% of AI projects not successful because most projects are very discrete use
2:00-2:20
Building Precision Oncology Infrastructure in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
globally 60 precision initiatives but there really are because many in small countries
three out of five individuals in India die of cancer
precision medicine is a must and a hub and spoke model is needed in these places; Italy does this hub and spoke; spokes you enable the small places and bring them into the network so they know how and have access to precision medicine
in low income countries the challenge starts with biopsy: then diagnosis and biomarker is issue; then treatment decision a problem as they may not have access to molecular tumor boards
prevention is always a difficult task in LMICs (low income)
you have ten times more patients in India than in US (triage can be insurmountable)
ICGA Foundation: Indian Cancer Genome Atlas
in India mutational frequencies vary with geographical borders like EGFR mutations or KRAS mutations
genomic landscape of ovarian cancer in India totally different than in TCGA data
even different pathways are altered in ovarian cancer seen in North America than in India
MAY mean that biomarker panels need to be adjusted based on countries used in
the molecular data has to be curated for the India cases to be submitted to a tumor board
twenty diagnostic tests in market like TruCheck for Indian market; uses liquid biopsy
they are also tailoring diagnostic and treatment for India getting FDA fast track approvals
2:20-2:40
Co-targeting KIT/PDGRFA and Genomic Integrity in Gastrointestinal Stromal Tumors
Lori Rink, PhD, Associate Professor, Fox Chase Cancer Center
GIST are most common nesychymal tumor in GI tract
used to be misdiagnosed; was considered a leimyosarcoma
very asymptomatic tumors and not good prognosis
very refractory to genotoxic therapies
RTK KIT/PDGFRA gain of function mutations
Gleevec imatinib for unresectable GIST however vast majority of even responders become resistant to therapy and cancer returns
there is a mutation map for hotspot mutations and sensitivity for gleevec
however resistance emerged to ripretinib; in ATP binding pocket
over treatment get a polyclonal resistance
performed a kinome analysis; Wee1 looked like a potential target
mouse studies (80 day) showed good efficacy
avapiritinib ahs some neurotox and used in PDGFRA mut GIST model which is resistant to imitinib
but if use Wee1 inhibitor with TKI can lower dose of avapiritinib
cotargeting KIT/PDGFRA and WEE1 increases replicative stress
they are using PDX models to test these combinations
Studies are showing that genetic tests are being ordered at a sufficient rate however it appears there are problems in interpretation and developing treatment plans based on omics testing results
30 % of patients in past and now currently half of all patients are not being given the proper treatment based on genomic testing results (ASCO)
E.g. only 1.5% with NTRK fusions received a NTRK based therapy (this was > 4000 patients receiving wrong therapy)
A lung oncologist may only see one patient with NTRK fusion in three years
Precision Medicine Practice Gaps
48% of oncologist surveyed agreed pathologist needs to be more informed and relevant in the decision making process with regard to tests needing to be ordered
95% said need to flip cost issues ; what does it cost not to get a test … i.e. what is the cost of the wrong therapy
We need a new commercialization model for therapeutic development for this new era of “n of one” patient
There are some tumor markers approved by FDA that cant just be measured by NGS and are correlated with a pathologic complete response
Many point mutations will have no actionable drug
Many alterations are post-genomic meaning there is a post translational component to many prognostic biomarkers
Prevalence of point mutation with no actionable mutation is a limit of NGS
It is important to look at phospho protein spectrum as a potential biomarker
Reverse phase protein proteomic analysis
Made into CLIA based array
They trained centers around the US on the technology and analysis
Basing proteomics or protein markers by traditional IHC requires much antibody validation so if the mass spectrometry field can catch up it would be very powerful
With multiple MRM.MS there is too low abundance of phosphoproteins to allow for good detection
They conducted the I-SPY2 trial for breast cancer and determining if phosphoproteins could be a good biomarker panel
They found they could predict a HER2 response better than NGS
There were patients who were predicted HER2 negative that actually had an activated HER2 signaling pathway by proteomics so NGS must have had a series of false negatives
HER2 co phosphorylation predicts pathologic complete response and predicts therapy by herceptin
They found patients classified as HER2 negative by FISH were HER2 positive by proteomics and had HER2 activation
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100+ Mass General Brigham Leading Experts Identify
Top Unmet Needs in Healthcare
Project from Harvard Medical School-affiliated clinicians and scientists in the Mass General Brigham healthcare system stimulates new consideration, urgency regarding
innovation in life sciences, healthcare
Top 10 List Announced at World Medical Innovation Forum
BOSTON, MA September 25, 2024 – Some of the most vexing challenges and transformational opportunities in healthcare are included in a new list, “Top Unmet Needs in Healthcare” released by leading experts at Mass General Brigham. Identified by more than 100 Harvard Medical School faculty at Mass General Brigham, the findings range from the need to expand and accelerate rare disease treatment, to the coming “gray tsunami” of aging patients and the implications for patient care, delivery, and technology. The project, revealed at the 10th annual World Medical Innovation Forum, is meant to stimulate new consideration and urgency regarding solving and advancing these issues for improved patient care.
Views from Leading Clinicians, Researchers, and Practitioners in Academic Medicine
The Top Unmet Needs emerge from structured one-on-one discussions with more than 100 Harvard faculty who practice medicine and conduct research at Mass General Brigham, the largest hospital system-based research enterprise in the U.S., with an annual research budget exceeding $2 billion, and five of the nation’s top hospitals according to US News & World Report.
Through one-on-one discussions with these key opinion leaders from diverse clinical and research fields, and subsequent analyses by internal teams of experts, Mass General Brigham has identified the following top 10 unmet clinical needs:
#1. Preparing for the ‘Gray Tsunami’
The need for better tools and therapies aimed at caring for geriatric populations and maintaining geriatric independence, with a particular focus on expanded hospital-at-home capabilities, and the need to better understand the pathways that lead to chronic and acute disease in geriatric patients to enable better and more proactive treatment.
#2. Defining and Maintaining Brain Health
The need for a model of brain health and neurological care that clearly defines not only what brain health is but also integrates our current understanding of the mechanisms and phases of neuroinflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases; enables better and earlier diagnoses and treatment; and propels the development of therapies that target these mechanisms and phases.
#3. A Paradigm Shift in Cancer Treatment
The need for a new framework for therapeutic development in cancer that is focused on improving curability as opposed to an exclusive focus on the development of drugs for metastatic disease. This
framework also requires effective tools for early-stage cancer detection across the board in all cancers, but especially in lung, ovarian, pancreatic, and GI cancers (esophagus, stomach and colon).
#4. Targeting Fibrosis, a Shared Culprit in Disease
The need for therapeutics that target fibrosis (tissue scarring), which is responsible for a significant percentage of deaths worldwide, representing diseases of the lung, liver, kidney, heart, and skin.
#5. New Approaches for Infectious Disease in a Changing World
The need for novel strategies for the rapid diagnoses, treatment, and even prevention of antibiotic-resistant infections, and the need for the next generation of globally deployable vaccines to enable pandemic preparedness.
#6. Striving for Equity in Healthcare
The need to radically rethink how, when, and where patients interact with healthcare services to optimize healthcare access and efficiency without diminishing its effectiveness, and to proactively meet the needs of currently underserved populations.
#7. Riding the Wave of Clinical Data
The need to expand the scope of available clinical data to include historically understudied populations (including women) and to model and implement a cohesive, dynamic data “stream,” which flows as patients do between the different phases of health and clinical care, enabling comparisons of patients to their previously healthy selves and the development of AI/ML approaches to harness these data to improve diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment.
#8. A Systems-Level View of Human Disease
The need to rethink how we understand and treat disease — not only from an organ-specific standpoint but from a whole-body, systems-level view — and to fully elucidate the roles that inflammation and immune pathways play in autoimmune and infectious diseases and their effects on chronic and acute diseases in diverse human systems, such as the cardiovascular/circulatory and nervous systems.
#9. A New Approach to Psychiatric Disease
The need for novel treatments for psychiatric disease, improved biomarkers and minimally invasive and ambulatory ways of measuring them, and more productive interactions with industry to advance new therapies to the clinic. This includes hybrid therapies (therapies that combine elements such as talk therapy, novel biomarkers, and pharmacological treatments) as well as new diagnostic and treatment modalities, such as psychedelic therapeutics and precision psychiatry.
#10. Charting a Course in Rare Disease Treatment
The need for viable treatments for the 7,000 identified rare diseases, especially the roughly 70% of such diseases that are genetic and the effects of which are first observed in early childhood.
The Unmet Needs list also include the following honorable mentions which rose to significant rankings in the analysis:
Driving Innovation in Chronic Disease: Improved Diagnosis, Treatment, and Prevention
A New Era of Obesity Medicine
A New Generation of Pain Treatments
Unlocking Novel Treatments for the Skin
Overarching Themes
Addressing unmet clinical needs involves solving a number of common challenges, including commercialization hurdles, regulatory considerations, and funding. The Mass General Brigham project identified overarching themes to help address these challenges and support innovation across multiple sectors. These include:
Taking a systems view of human disease and the practice of system-medicine
Developing a global view of infectious disease, including antimicrobial resistance
An expansion in high-quality, real-world data that closes gaps in current data (particularly for women and other underserved populations) and ensures that data sets are sufficiently enabling for AI/ML
Improving health and healthcare across key populations, including geriatrics and rare genetic disease
Addressing major diseases of the brain, including both neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric conditions; these include Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, as well as psychiatric and mental health disorders
Opening an era of precision medicine across disease areas that includes early diagnosis, treating staged disease, and biomarker discovery and utilization
Panel co-chairs José Florez, Physician-in-Chief and Co-Chair of the MGB Department of Medicine and the Jackson Professor of Clinical Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and Bruce Levy, Physician-In-Chief and Co-Chair of the MGB Department of Medicine and the Parker B. Francis Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, noted how the observations of a broad and representative set of faculty help illuminate the innovation landscape ahead.
“As a leader in patient care and healthcare innovation, our goal is to build on the legacy of research and discovery that has shaped the hospitals of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system for more than a hundred years, and continue to bring breakthroughs forward that can help solve pressing needs,” said Dr. Florez.
Dr. Levy added that “This is a roadmap for the future that can inform discussions happening throughout the healthcare and investment ecosystem regarding the future of medicine.”
More than 2000 decision-makers from healthcare, industry, finance and government attended the World Medical Innovation Forum this week in Boston. A premier global event, the Forum highlights leading innovations in medicine and transformative advancements in patient care.
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About Mass General Brigham
Mass General Brigham is an integrated academic health care system, uniting great minds to solve the hardest problems in medicine for our communities and the world. Mass General Brigham connects a full continuum of care across a system of academic medical centers, community and specialty hospitals, a health insurance plan, physician networks, community health centers, home care, and long-term care services. Mass General Brigham is a nonprofit organization committed to patient care, research, teaching, and service to the community. In addition, Mass General Brigham is one of the nation’s leading biomedical research organizations with several Harvard Medical School teaching hospitals. For more information, please visit massgeneralbrigham.org.
Contact: Tracy Doyle Mass General Brigham Innovation
(262) 227-5514
Tdoyle5@mgb.org
SOURCE
From: “Doyle, Tracy” <tdoyle5@mgb.org> Date: Thursday, September 26, 2024 at 10:19 AM Cc: “Card, Matthew” <matthew.card@bofa.com> Subject: Unmet Needs in Healthcare — Press Release and link to panel
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Invitation as MEDIA
From: “Doyle, Tracy” <tdoyle5@mgb.org> Date: Wednesday, August 14, 2024 at 4:04 PM Cc: “Doyle, Tracy” <tdoyle5@mgb.org>, “Card, Matthew” <matthew.card@bofa.com> Subject: Media Invite: World Medical Innovation Forum, Sept. 23-25, Boston — Hundreds of clinical experts, industry, investment leaders
Media Invite: World Medical Innovation Forum: Monday, Sept. 23—Wednesday, Sept. 25, Boston
At the intersection of innovation and investment in healthcare
Join Us!
Register Now: WMIF24 Media Registration
Mass General Brigham, one of the nation’s leading academic medical centers, is pleased to invite reporters to the 10th annual World Medical Innovation Forum (WMIF) Monday, Sept. 23–Wednesday, Sept. 25 at the Encore Boston Harbor in Boston. The event features expert discussions of scientific and investment trends for some of the hottest areas in healthcare, including
GLP-1s,
the cancer care revolution,
generative AI-enabled care paths,
xenotransplant,
community health,
hospital at home, and
therapeutic psychedelics, among many others.
The agenda includes nearly 175 executive speakers from healthcare, pharma, venture, start-ups, and the front lines of care, including many of Mass General Brigham’s Harvard Medical School-affiliated researchers and clinicians who this year will host 20+ focused sessions. Bank of America, presenting sponsor of the Forum, will provide additional expert insights on the investment landscape associated with healthcare innovation.
Forum highlights include:
1:1 and panel interviews with leading CEOs and government officials including:
Stéphane Bancel, CEO, Moderna
Albert Bourla, PhD, CEO, Pfizer
Marc Casper, CEO, Thermo Fisher
Deepak Chopra, MD, Founder, The Chopra Foundation
Scott Gottlieb, MD, PhD, Former Commissioner, FDA (2017-2019)
Maura Healey, Governor, Commonwealth of Massachusetts
David Hyman, MD, CMO, Eli Lilly
Haim Israel, Head of Global Thematic Investing Research, BofA Global Research
Reshma Kewalramani, MD, CEO, Vertex
Anne Klibanski, MD, President and CEO, Mass General Brigham
Peter Marks, MD, PhD, Director, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, FDA
Tadaaki Taniguchi, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer, Astellas Pharma
Christophe Weber, CEO, Takeda
Renee Wegrzyn, PhD, Director, ARPA-H
Expert panels including:
Oncology’s New Paradigm
Gene Therapies for Rare Diseases
Future of Metabolic Therapies
Digital Transformation
Biologic Revolution in Radiotherapies
Cell Therapies for Autoimmune Diseases
Hospital Venture Funds
Leading biotech and venture speakers from companies including:
Abata Therapeutics
Atlas Venture
Be Biopharma
Everly Health
Flagship Pioneering
Fractyl Health
MindMed
Mirador Therapeutics
Regor Therapeutics
RH Capital
Transcend Therapeutics
Exclusive programming:
First Look – 15 rapid-fire presentations on the latest research from leading Mass General Brigham scientists
Un-Met Clinical Needs – 100+ key opinion leaders in healthcare weigh in on the top un-met clinical needs in medicine today
Emerging Tech Zone – Hands-on exploration of some of the latest digital and AI-based healthcare technologies
Liz Everett Krisberg, Head of Bank of America Institute
Record attendance this year
Introduction to Haim
Panelist
Haim Israel
Head of Global Thematic Investing Research, BofA Global Research
Concept of the Future and for the Future: Short-term and long-term
Humanity achievements in Ten Year: Data, Processing power and BRAIN – Long-term becomes Short-term – Last 10 years: 2012, 2014 solar system, 2015 medicine, 2019 blackhole, 2023 core of sun – star was created hotter than core sun
2022, 2024 – galaxy picture of the universe
Volume of data created every month in terrabyts every 18 month data is duplicating itself.
Olny 1% is used – imagine 2% or 3%
Processing power since Apollo 11 [one trillion] – getting cheaper – cost for calculation went down 16,000 fold since 1995
AMMOUNT of DATA goes up and Cost of COMPUTATION goes down – price per giga byte
Projections for the next 100 years
Negative for people and Negative for Companies who are concerned with quarterly financial data
Companies: Walmart, Alphabet, Home Depot – DATA larger that COuntries
Living in defining moment: started by iPhone revolution and 2023 by AI revolution – 6x outpaced Moore’s Law by GPT by 3000x
18 months into AI revolution – GPT in use
The next 10 years:
Aging population
2024 – birth rate low in US, Japan, CHina, S. Korea – Pension system will decline in size
2.2 millions new material were created by DeepMind at Alphabet by simulation of AI on molecule
Microsoft in 80 hours identified 18 materials winners for Batteries using AI from 32 million material candidates
AI- weather calculations in minutes 1,000x faster, cheaper and more accurate
2025 – GPT-6 AI surpass Human Brain
China is a big player in AI
Cyber CRIME is the 3rd largest economy in the World. Hackers are using ChatGPT to create fake pictures leading to ZERO privacy
PRIVACY: Deepfakes up 62x, social media
2024 – Global Grid – needs much more energy because AI consumes so much energy
Metals shortages: Nickel, Copper,
Scarcity of water for 2/3 of the planet
data centers consume water more than Japan
2025 – Genomics Data sequencing bigger that X.com or Youtube
2027 – Peak oil demand: needed to be scalable, cheaper 25%
2028 – 5G networks reaches full capacity, 6G will be needed
2029 – 25x more satellites in Orbit than today
2029 – Personalized AI medicines and treatments will manipulate death and revive LONGEVITY – AI will generate drugs and all treatments
2030 – Generative AI: re-skill 1 Billion people
2035 – Fusion energy, known technology since the atomic bomb, how to keep it stable in plasma state of material – not yet achieved, it is clean, cheap: to Power the World – equivalent of 11 barrels of oil
Large cities: Cable diameter 17cm wide to power a large city
AI will change scarcity into abundance
2037 – Artifitial SUPER Intelligence – AI to outsmart Life
Quantum computer – Consortium of NASA and other governmental agencies and Google on quantum computer design
David Brown, MD, President, Academic Medical Centers, Mass General Brigham; Mass General Trustees Professor of Emergency Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Hoe do you balance Private medicine with Public not for profit HealthCare
Healthcare delivery system can achieve that much in Human health
Resources for Equity: housing and services: Capacity and COst
Evolution of care close to home catalyst of the Pandemic – How government think about the right patient for the right care level
MGB 40-60 In-patients at Home – Largest Program in the State – product needs to scale across all population though some do not have food security at home
Panelist
Kate Walsh, Secretary of Health and Human Services, State of Massachusetts
Stuart Bankrupcy – pstioents and providers involvement – structure challenges
Race and ethnicity – disparities, access and equity
Identify the challenge for Race and ethnicity
Focus to identify resources
Medicare & Medicaid – Human needs equity involve housing, food and home care – Public and Private sector cooperation
Pay for Performance
MA vs NYC – resources for welcoming new populations to the State of MA
Help finding Housing vs Shelter people
MA is the only State in the Union that is a Shelter State
People in our COuntry LEGALLY are in and out of shelters, new arrivals of skilled labor – temporary assistance to get jobs that we can’t find people to fill: CNA as example
MA has a community of shelters and medical center in the communities
Services for people that are at risk due to past life in home countries
Support for kids that do not speak English
Care and location: Keep care at home or SNF at home or in the community
David Hyman, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Eli Lilly and Company
Cardio-metabolic – medicines redefining disease by medicines benefit to patients
Investment in manufacturing medicines for Obesity, demand continue to expand
Oral small molecule and scaling focus on Sleep apnea, half of the population have metabolic disease and heart failure
Extension Program with sustained weigh loss in pre-diabetes progressing into maintained weigh loss
Invest in R&D in the cardio-metabolic
Listed to community feedback on experience how the drugs in AD affected patients in the Community – learning about challenges in delivery innovation in AD – irreversible neurodegenerative diseases – prevent not to loose the patients entirely – brain function
Targeted therapies, genetic therapies
Past life Oncologist – delivered innovations into Cancer patients – genetic medicines
AD medicines are not accessible even to people of means, Drug delivery using PET spinal injections
Ten years horizons at Eli Lilly is common
Obligation to provide scientific evidence from clinical trials
Inventory of patients qualification to participate in Clinical trials
Oncology: Interactions in biologics, cell therapies, conjucate compounds
Renewal of Targeting antigens
In Oncology: Proportions of patients get long term disease control by molecules developed in Academic Centers.
Eli Lilly acquired a BioPharma with manufacturing capabilities
Innovations are core vs discount cash-flow, strategy is to look at the science due to capacity to develop innovations
Alec Stranahan, PhD, SMid-Cap Biotech Analyst, BofA Global Research
Caroline Apovian, MD, MGH, HMS
Last ten years, from metabolic lessons of Bariatric patients
Treat obesity before surgery
product composition
multidisciplinary approach to obesity needs to be like in Oncology – multiple dsciplines
Bariatric and weigh regain like stent stenosis after surgery
Obesity dysfunction inflammation Gut-Brain transfer of hormones from the gut do not reach the brain to carb hunger socieaty is not signaled in the Brain and eating continued to mitigate hunger
Insurance must cover
Obesity Medicine – training 25 new practitioners to treat Obesity – Standards of Care, life style change
Primary care providers do not have resources to treat Life style component of
To reduce mortality by 20% by Bariatric surgery – No reduce of mortality by stenting – THAT I DISAGREE with
Panelists
David Hyman, MD, Chief Medical Officer, Eli Lilly and Company
non-peptide agonist, bariatric level for obesity
peptide injecting device
hormones and peptids activan inhibitor
hundred of million of people – scaling up
Adolescence with obesity will develop CVD, NASH
Epidemic of obesity the medicines are combating the epidemic
Vials, differential pricing, orals vs injectables
Productivity of work force, coverage by employers health insurance vs Government to handle coverage
10 additional drug
Xiayang Qiu, PhD, CEO, Regor Therapeutics
six years ago, great opportunity peptide and biologics for lifetime disease of obesity
cardiovascular favorably = affected by reduction in weigh
Medicines that works start early at age 35
Harith Rajagopalan, MD, PhD, CEO & Co-Founder, Fractyl Health
Diet & Life Style
Eli Lilly and Novo Nordik – have great drugs
Patients stop using them before they see the benefit
durable long term of mentainance long-tern to stay on the drug
Past life coronary cardiologist: PCI vs surgery choice of care angioplasty vs open heart surgery
Bariatric surgery vs great medicines
may be angioplasty for Bariatric patients
Obesity is different than CVD
BC-BS coverage of obesity drugs because weight is gained back vs Statins – continual use control cholestrol
maintenance drugs in the field of Obesity are needed
cost of drugs will come down
more evidence on obesity drugs will affect Formulary
Jason Zemansky, PhD, SMid-Cap Biotech Analyst, BofA Global Research
Patrick Ellinor, MD, PhD, MGH, HMS
Panelists
Craig Basson, MD, PhD, Chief Medical Officer, Bitterroot Bio
17,000 patients obese no DM
prior CVD followed 3 yrs of treatment 6% mortality during the Trial
Death from CVD endpoint
weight at joining the trial, loss during the trial, benefir from the drug’
improve CVD not weigh loss
mechanism of Inflammation – drug, reduced atherosclerosis and reduced plaque and cytokins and inflammation improve CVD status
combination of life style and drugs GI axis systemic
cardiac artery disease: cholesterol, inhibit inflammatory signals plaque build on top of itself – approaches to remove debris macrophages in the plaque for artherosclerosis mechanism as CVD risk
Joshua Cohen, Co-CEO, Amylyx Pharmaceuticals
Bariatric surgery lower obesity
genetics, eating habits,
GLP-1 agonist developed
Punit Dhillon, CEO, Skye Bioscience
Phase II study combination therapy CVD and Obesity
optimize body composition – more productive on the body periphery
subtypes metabolic gains
Pharmacotherapy for obesity: mechanisms complementary life style change is a must have for long-term benefits
weight loss as a start before obesity treatment
co-morbidities of obesity
Justin Klee, Co-CEO, Amylyx Pharmaceuticals
Parkinson’s CNS peripheral Brain access therapies
revolution in metabolic disease treatment options, more studies for pathways to target the right patients for the right treatment
GLP-1 is energy regulator, Hypoglycemia is very dangerous
Rohan Palekar, CEO, 89bio
applications to obesity – data support
bariatric surgery intervention is not enough, NASH will not be impacted only by the surgery
NASH is a disease taking 25 years to develop
risk of fibrosis to set in Cirrhosis which is not curable
Liz Kwo, MD, Chief Commercial Officer, Everly Health
Infrastructure
AI used for
Panelists
Anna Åsberg, Vice President, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals
Massive data bases organize
AI to augment intelligence inside the data
Tyler Bryson, Corporate Vice President, US Health & Public Sector Industries, Microsoft Corporation
Do we have platforms to serve new problem
Regulatory changes require visiting use cases
Pharma has the research data, providers have EMR – Microsoft builds new models using that data
Tumor imaging data was processed and new pattern recognition done on data of these tumors. New patterns are now a subject for research, just identified inside the data
Trust in Healthcare
NYC and Microsoft developed a System for small businesses to access city resources
Works with Academic institutions: Programs at Harvard and Princeton to train students by Microsoft employees on MIcrosoft AI technologies that as they graduate there will be trained new AI-trained employees
collaborations
Aditya Bhasin, BofA
AI in Banking: Bias, security
AI virtual system analytics to provide insight for scaling
Jane Moran, MGH
Network, Data structure needs updates
technology to help clinicians
care team to work with Generative AI to assist in e-mail reading and problem solving
Healthcare equity – avoid Bias
AI is not an answer to every problem
innovate at scale: using Epic and Microsoft
Clinical data structure for LLM, AI to renovate administrative processes inside MGH
John Bishai, PhD, Global Healthcare Investment Banking, BofA Securities
Umar Mahmood, MD, PhD, MGH, HMS
Panelists
Amos Hedt, Chief Business Strategy Officer, Perspective Therapeutics
imaging used to deliver the therapeutics before the drug touch the patient to calculate toxicity
PL-1 combined with radiotherapy synergistics results
immunogenic combination therapy, in presence of these agents, immune response reaction in the immune cells
Matthew Roden, PhD, President & CEO, Aktis Oncology
Conjugates – delivery direct to tumors
Opportunity two targets: (1) SSTA2 marker (2) xx
WHen agent inside the tumor, shrinkage and no emergence of cell nascent
optimization design
Treatment break for patients and families
Philip Kantoff, MD, Co-Founder & CEO, Convergent Therapeutics
Radio-pharmeceutics : 10 days half-life carrier not a target for small molecules Data on 120 patient, namo robust response synergy of antibody and molecule
image alphas
durable responses
Matt Vincent, PhD, AdvanCell Isotopes
ROS species generated in the tumor
peptides, protein binders
paradigm shift in delivery of oncology therapeutics directly to tumors
Lena Janes, PhD, Abdera Therapeutics
isotope will deliver the payload without damaging the DNA and healthy tissue
target different types of tumors, different half-life
Radiation therapy using isotopes id one of two modalities: tumor in and tumor out approach
screen for patient for the translational therapy
Next generation of products will come, now it is the beginning of these agents
Michael Ryskin, Life Science Tools & Diagnostics Analyst, BofA Global Research
Precision Medicine was it a paradigm shift??
Acquisition of manufacturing capabilities
research, manufacturinf line blurred
WHat excites you the most
Panelist
Marc Casper, Chairman, President & CEO, Thermo Fisher Scientific
Enabling Life sceinces, Pharmaceutical industries $1.5Billion internal investment annually
AI increasing knowledge
How is Precision Medicine applied? Sequencing in Cancer accelerated the Genomics information in use for 24 hours response of the sequence – adopted around the World.
at MGH lung cancers are treated with genomic sequencing
identification of the patients suitability for a targeted treatment
treatment during pregnacy at home vs hospitalization
History of company: Tools first: Mass spectrometry, one year for one sequence, protein identification and carrying to Mass spectrometry
Interactions need understanding acquiring electro spectrometry allowing analytical chemistry on proteins
Broad range of products: Clinical research to meet regulatory requirements entry into Reagents products.
Clinical Trials made effective by Thermo Scientific Products
Capabilities in registries, patient safety in psoriasis
Large role in experimental medicine drives efficiency in LABS
SIze of customers: small Biotech and large Pharma
Manufacture medicines: work with partnersbuilt by acquisitions small molecules,
100 engagements research, supply chain making medicines available at sites
Role for AI at Thermo Scientific:
Productivity – Cost effective for processes in use by 120,000 employees
Super customer interaction perfected by interogations with internal manuals to provide answers quickly
Improvement of products
Excitement Points: Responsiveness to COVID pandemic
Tazeen Ahmad, SMid-Cap Biotech Analyst, BofA Global Research
Are you using AI
Neuroinflammation
Cynthia Lemere, PhD, BWH, HMS
What systems are primarily impacted by the Immunes system
Drug delivery for inflammation huge area
Getting antibodies to the Brain
Precision medicine, genetics,specific person with specific immune disease
Panelists
Jo Viney, PhD, Cofounder, President & CEO, Seismic Therapeutic
Pandemics highlighted the impact of the immune system
Targeting cytokines in specific locations – hew approach
Modalities on hand: protein degradation mediation by bringing two cells together
AI is used for Patient stratification
AI to be used in Pathways involved in disease process to identify Biologics, PROTAC,
AI and ML for training models from interaction between proteins
ChatGPT to predict interactions among proteins
Immune disease and remission bust the immune system to improve quality of life of patient undergoing interventions
T-cell engaggers – in cases of refractory – great approach for boosting the immune system: removal of antibidies, recycling antibodies,
Two ends: Cell depletion vs Early detection
Therapy is every 6 months, cell depletion takes 3 months to come back.
Target immune system in the periphery,
Immune system in neurodegenerative diseases: Parkinson’s local modulation to penetrate neurological system
Markers to cross the BBB or not cross in neurological diseases
Immune disease is POLYGENIC multiple o=etiologies, mutation, genetics, which cell and which pathway to target a therapeutics: Biologics
Patient stratification is key for Precision Medicine at the cell level
T-cell, B-cell, Cytokines and antibodies mediated disease
ADGs degradation
9:45 AM – 10:10 AM
Picasso Ballroom
H. Jeffrey Wilkins, MD, Abcuro
Inflammation play a role in activating the immune system
zin the days of Medical School: inhibition of cytokines
Today: specificity to target cells for depletion
Specific biomarkers for response to therapies
cell types by mutations and physiology and causality in the inflammation area: we know why they have inflammation we need to learn interventions for inflammation
Asthma in the 40s as an inflammatory disease
assess treatment of inflammation
Neuro-inflammation – not well understood
What is the cause that drive the disease: understanding encephalitis?
NiranJana Nagarajan, PhD, MGB Ventures
Biology is the driver not AI
depletion of cells in a certain stage
Translation from disease to other diseases in the case of cell therapy potential – active area companies are trying solutions
Daniel Kuritzkes, MD, Chief, Division of Infectious Diseases, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Harriet Ryan Albee Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Pathways in vaccine design
How to educate population on Vaccines
other approaches than vaccines
Alec Stranahan, PhD, SMid-Cap Biotech Analyst, BofA Global Research
Vaccine approval
Next generation vaccines
Panelist
Stéphane Bancel, CEO, Moderna
Vaccine design: long term vaccines weakens in aged population
data on role of AVV in Multiple Sclerosis
working on in the US vs France, Netherland in Europe different approaches
Vaccine for HIV
Vaccine was approved last year for children, pharmacies shortage
Season of FLu three times more vaccines in use
Employees run vaccine clinics on site
Vaccines not related to COVID
Misinformation from COVID vaccine
5% of COVID hospitalized were on the booster
Combination vaccines for high risk populations
Healthcare providers need to be involved in Education, many do not have an interest in the education on vaccines
Local stories from Vaccine manufectures and developer to be used in education in the communities
Individual DNA cancer celll signature of the cancer – data over time for development of vaccine to cancer many more tumor types are needed
Checkpoints in early disease
biopsy are too expensive
Side effect studies going on
mono-therapy vs immunotherapy costs involved
Naive virus to get into the Liver two diseases – cassets for sose management
Recombinant antibodies technology from the 70s
PD-1
COVID – was nto in the plan for development – design in silicon in two weeks – no change after this design
Large/SMid-Cap Biotech and Major Pharma Analyst, BofA Global Research
TCM
CAR-T
advantages of each cell type
Angele Shen, MGB Innovations
CAR-T
What would be a quick breakthrough?
Panelists
Jeff Bluestone, PhD, CEO & President, Sonoma Biotherapeutics
Cell therapy for cell depletion elimination of B-cells like its role in Multiple Sclerosis
Working with regulatory T-cells
Population of cells to study: T-cells master regulator in multiple ways – produce metabolic factors, infection tone in activation of other cells
Biology of cell: RNA, DNA
TCR – target antigens in tissues they are in in immune suppression
FInding the right peptide bindes to a certain MAC
CAR-T – recornize the cells in the local milieu like in patients with RA as an autoimmune disease
Clinical models ascertain cell types involvement leading to clinical trial insights then to therapies on a decision tree
recent data on CAR-T immune response in allogeneic for potential use in neurodegenerative diseases
patients and companies over react on immune therapy: Patients and Science vs hype
next generation: POC,
Gene therapy specificities vs Cell therapies – each approach will develop a different drug
FDA and NIH has in 11/2023 a meeting on Regulation of Cell therapy on stability and their approach to immune disease where there are already several drugs
approvals challenges companies
Price, too expensive a treatment is cell therapy
Chad Cowan, PhD, Executive Advisor, Century Therapeutics
use Natural Killer cells to elicit long-term immune response, T-cells,
active Beta cells]Regulatory monitoring use
DM – regulatory cells made from Stem cells
mission durable response
Clinical issues – not easy way for treatment wiht a cell line and bioreactors and modalities less similar to autologoous celles
CAR-T in oncology lessons now are transferred to Immune disease
Cell therapy requires technologies to mature multiple modalities and multiple drugs not one cell therapy for all immune diseases
Stability of the therapy vs rejection by immune system
FDA making cells is not as making drugs – higher level of scrutiny for cell therapy
SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY on B-cells for future breakthrough
Samantha Singer, President & CEO, Abata Therapeutics
Immune response involve many cell types in many diseases
Oncology the use of T-cells as tissue residents staying in tissue long time
Specific biology of the disease and regulatory cells receptors optimizing TCR presentation in pathology of tissue residents phyno types
activate in nervous system or in pancreas – intersection of cell biology with disease biology
Market feasibility – scaling, biology, pathology for reimbursement
antibody therapy may be appropriate than cell therapy is only a novel option
Cell manufacturing requires optimization of process, companies commercializing across all cell types
comprehensive approach for systemic immune suppression
: healthy tissue vs diseased tissue with cell theray implanted cells as residents in tissue
clinical data on product performance and on the biology reactions
Jose Florez, MD, PhD, Physician-in-Chief and Chair, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital; Professor, Harvard Medical School
40 minutes to deal with big needs collected from 100 faculties at Harvard Medical School
The ten issues on one slide
How could we use compute to distill data
Bruce Levy, MD, Physician-In-Chief and Co-Chair, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Parker B. Francis Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Transformation from the Present to the Future
identifying the needs
Infectious diseases: Rapid diagnostics need
resistance to antibiotics and metabolic reactions endogenous
Pandemics globally of diseases erradicated in the past: Pox, polio
Improving health in Geriatrics, not population growing but geriatric population growing. Beyong age 60 a citizen will use 1 or 2 physicians each
7,000 diseases, Genetic diseases requires integration and innovations in therapy
Innovations in Home devices
Panelists
Rox Anderson, MD, Lancer Endowed Chair of Dermatology;, Director, Wellman Center for Photomedicine, MGH; Professor of Dermatology, HMS
Access to data across institutions
Nicole Davis, PhD, Biomedical Communications
We asked 104 expert practitioners, content collected was analyzed
detection early
keeping the Human brain healthy
geriatrics Medicine, aging and compound effects on health system with aging and Health equity
Bias in Data
Jean-François Formela, MD, Partner, Atlas Venture
genetic information used in therapeutics design
Steven Greenberg, MD, Neurologist, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School
Human genome completed in 1999, human genetic diseases were discovered learn about the disease at the tissue level with genomics and a system approach
Pathogenic drivers, systme integration by therapeutics approaches to pathways multiple cytokines in allergic reactions Pfizer had two biomarkers and therapies for systemic biology of disease
Pediatrics has its own challenges
Imaging medicine
Living longer at a lower cost – HOW TO ACHIEVE THAT?
growth abnormality in children: Body growth and Skull shrink
John Lepore, MD, CEO, ProFound Therapeutics;, CEO-Partner, Flagship Pioneering
Pathway, targeting therapy to patients in a System biological approach
Database of systme biology has missing components not included in the Human genome project – completion of the Data
Definition of End points needs revisiting
Identifying specific populations vs getting quickly to market
Diseases of aging: Muscles diseases – how to promote improvement in muscle mass
CONCLUSIONS
Gray Tsunami
Brain health
Cancer treatment paradigm shift
Fibrosis in many diseases
infectious disease in changing World
Equity in HC
Clinical Data is VAST
Systemic view of Human disease
New approaches to Psychaitry
Rare disease treatment needs a charter
In addition,
new generation of pain treatment
skin treatment new drugs
Chronic disease: improve treatment and prevention.
Tazeen Ahmad, SMid-Cap Biotech Analyst, BofA Global Research
FDA sets criteria – How is that done?
Autoimmune disease therapies – What is in the horizon?
Paul Anderson, MD, PhD, Chief Academic Officer, Mass General Brigham;
drug development
drug pricing in Europe
New book
RA needs more medicines
UNCONTROLLED SPREAD
In Uncontrolled Spread, a New York Times Best Seller, Dr. Scott Gottlieb identifies the reasons why the US was caught unprepared for the pandemic and how the country can improve its strategic planning to prepare for future viral threats.
Panelist
Scott Gottlieb, MD, Physician; Former Commissioner, Food and Drug Administration (2017-2019)
FDA approval 1st gene therapy in his tenure
Price of drugs: efficatious vs time to deveop
competitors in the marketplace are there for market share
New Book: Episodes in the FDA, appproval process at FDA, Gene therapy 1st in class approved – a special moment. Back in 1980s era translated to antibodies, to T-cell pioneering work.
Publisher worried it will not sell very well
FDA had concerns about manufacturing aspects
In 2024 we understand Biologics on novel platforms
Worries that Medicare will not reimbursement and cover the new therapies: Cell therapy
Statins approval had a known very large market vs Cell therapy not known which Cancer patients will benefit???
Black box involved in Autoimmune, studies bring exciting results
In 2018 – needs arise for early approved of drugs in AD, amyloid plaque – change in thinking and is controversial
In early 2020, change in settings of clinical trials, placido no more the only way for Randomized trials
Approval for AD drug vs othe indication – the process is difference (DMD a case to think about)
AI & NLP: Train on data of 10,000 lesions
FDA choose not to regulate AI the physician is in the Middle
Who is wrong: CHatGPT or the clinician ?
Data set on gene may represents NEW biologies that Physicians had not seen before
Data validation on medical devices and their approval after regulating them
Diagnostics tests: Validation Panels are involved
Regulated on input data vs Output data and validate the input data
Platforms are needed for regulation of AI involvement in the drug discovery and the drug approval process
investment in this platforms will be done by Whom?? It will come
Framework for AI at FDA: Regulatory gray data for applications and standards for output – not a novel regulatory concept
If AI will be applied widely, I/O accuracy is a must have
may be achievable soon?
FDA is evolutionary organization in its decision process NOT a REVOLUTIONARY organization. Simulation work started in 2003, 40 people doing that then.
Recently, new team in Agency working of Safety with tools and technologies that are common in Science – Approvals to drug labels and off labels that 20 years ago would not have happened
Tolerance for higher prices is to support Private sector that brings the innovating drugs to market
Chief Medical & Digital Officer, UC San Diego Health
Kevin Mahoney
CEO, University of Pennsylvania Health System
Niall Martin, PhD
CEO, Artios Pharma
James Mawson
CEO, Global Corporate Venturing
Mark McKenna
Chairman & CEO, Mirador Therapeutics
Jane Moran
Chief Information and Digital Officer, Mass General Brigham
William Morris, MD
Chief Medical Information Officer, Google Cloud
Rohan Palekar
CEO, 89bio
Raju Prasad, PhD
Chief Financial Officer, CRISPR Therapeutics
Xiayang Qiu, PhD
CEO, Regor Therapeutics
Harith Rajagopalan MD, PhD
CEO & Co-Founder, Fractyl Health
Shiv Rao, MD
CEO & Founder, Abridge
Kerry Ressler, MD, PhD
Chief Scientific Officer, McLean Hospital; Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Matthew Roden, PhD
President & CEO, Aktis Oncology
Sandi See Tai, MD
Chief Development Officer, Lexeo Therapeutics
Samantha Singer
President & CEO, Abata Therapeutics
Joanne Smith-Farrell, PhD
CEO & Director, Be Biopharma
Emma Somers-Roy
Chief Investment Officer, Mass General Brigham
Adam Steensberg, MD
President & CEO, Zealand Pharma
Tadaaki Taniguchi, MD, PhD
Chief Medical Officer, Astellas Pharma
Elsie Taveras, MD
Chief Community Health & Health Equity Officer, Mass General Brigham; Conrad Taff Endowed Chair and Professor of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School
Jo Viney, PhD
Cofounder, President & CEO, Seismic Therapeutic
Ron Walls, MD
Chief Operating Officer, Mass General Brigham; Neskey Family Professor of Emergency Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Christophe Weber
President & CEO, Takeda
Fraser Wright, PhD
Chief Gene Therapy Officer, Kriya Therapeutics
Speakers
Anna Åsberg
Vice President, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals
Tazeen Ahmad
SMid-Cap Biotech Analyst, BofA Global Research
Jessica Allegretti, MD
Director, Crohn’s and Colitis Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Rox Anderson, MD
Lancer Endowed Chair of Dermatology; Director, Wellman Center for Photomedicine, MGH; Professor of Dermatology, HMS
Katherine Andriole, PhD
Director of Academic Research and Education, Mass General Brigham Data Science Office; Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School
Caroline Apovian, MD
Co-Director, Center for Weight Management and Wellness, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Vanita Aroda, MD
Director, Diabetes Clinical Research, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School
Natalie Artzi, PhD
Associate Professor of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital & Harvard Medical School
John Bishai, PhD
Global Healthcare Investment Banking, BofA Securities
David Blumenthal, MD
Professor of Practice of Public Health and Health Policy, Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health; Research Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School of Government; Samuel O. Thier Professor of Medicine, Emeritus, Harvard Medical School
Giles Boland, MD
President, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Physicians Organization; Philip H. Cook Distinguished Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School
Andrew Bressler
Washington Healthcare Policy Analyst, BofA Global Research
James Brink, MD
Enterprise Chief, Radiology, Mass General Brigham; Juan M. Taveras Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School
David Brown, MD
President, Academic Medical Centers, Mass General Brigham; Mass General Trustees Professor of Emergency Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Tyler Bryson
Corporate Vice President, US Health & Public Sector Industries, Microsoft Corporation
Jonathan Carlson, MD, PhD
Director of Chemistry, Center for Systems Biology, Massachusetts General Hospital; Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Miceal Chamberlain
President of Massachusetts, Bank of America
Moitreyee Chatterjee-Kishore, PhD
Head of Development, Immuno-Oncology and Cancer Cell Therapy, Astellas Pharma Inc.
Dong Feng Chen, MD, PhD
Associate Scientist, Massachusetts Eye and Ear; Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School
Jasmeer Chhatwal, MD, PhD
Associate Neurologist, Massachusetts General Hospital; Associate Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School
E. Antonio Chiocca, MD, PhD
Chair, Department of Neurosurgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Harvey W. Cushing Professor of Neurosurgery, Harvard Medical School
Bryan Choi, MD, PhD
Associate Director, Center for Brain Tumor Immunology and Immunotherapy, Massachusetts General Hospital; Assistant Professor of Neurosurgery, Harvard Medical School
Deepak Chopra, MD
Founder, The Chopra Foundation
Yolonda Colson, MD, PhD
Chief, Division of Thoracic Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital; Hermes C. Grillo Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School
Chad Cowan, PhD
Executive Advisor, Century Therapeutics
Cristina Cusin, MD
Director, MGH Ketamine Clinic and Psychiatrist, Depression Clinical and Research Program, Massachusetts General Hospital; Associate Professor in Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Nicole Davis, PhD
Biomedical Communications
Marcela del Carmen, MD
President, Massachusetts General Hospital and Massachusetts General Physicians Organization (MGPO); Executive Vice President, Mass General Brigham; Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, Harvard Medical School
Gerard Doherty, MD
Surgeon-in-Chief, Mass General Brigham Cancer; Surgeon-in-Chief, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Moseley Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School
Liz Everett Krisberg
Head of Bank of America Institute
Maurizio Fava, MD
Chair, Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital; Slater Family Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Keith Flaherty, MD
Director of Clinical Research, Mass General Cancer Center; Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Jose Florez, MD, PhD
Physician-in-Chief and Chair, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital; Professor, Harvard Medical School
Jean-François Formela, MD
Partner, Atlas Venture
Fritz François, MD
Executive Vice President and Vice Dean, Chief of Hospital Operations, NYU Langone Health
Joanna Gajuk
Health Care Facilities and Managed Care Analyst, BofA Global Research
Jason Gerberry
Specialty Pharma and SMid-Cap Biotech Analyst, BofA Global Research
Gad Getz, PhD
Director of Bioinformatics, Krantz Center for Cancer Research and Department of Pathology; Paul C. Zamecnik Chair in Cancer Research, Mass General Cancer Center; Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School
Alexandra Golby, MD
Neurosurgeon; Director of Image-guided Neurosurgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Professor of Neurosurgery, Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School
Allan Goldstein, MD
Chief of Pediatric Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital; Surgeon-in-Chief, Mass General for Children; Marshall K. Bartlett Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School
Scott Gottlieb, MD
Physician; Former Commissioner, Food and Drug Administration (2017-2019)
David Grayzel, MD
Partner, Atlas Venture
Steven Greenberg, MD
Neurologist, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Professor of Neurology, Harvard Medical School
Steven Grinspoon, MD
Chief, Metabolism Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital; Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Daphne Haas-Kogan, MD
Chief, Enterprise Radiation Oncology, Mass General Brigham; Professor, Harvard Medical School
Roger Hajjar, MD
Director, Gene & Cell Therapy Institute, Mass General Brigham
John Hanna, MD, PhD
Associate Professor, Brigham and Women’s Hospital & Harvard Medical School
Yvonne Hao
Secretary of Economic Development, Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Nobuhiko Hata PhD
Director, Surgical Navigation and Robotics Laboratory, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School
Maura Healey
Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Elizabeth Henske, MD
Director, Center for LAM Research and Clinical Care, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Leigh Hochberg MD, PhD
Director of Neurotechnology and Neurorecovery, Massachusetts General Hospital; Senior Lecturer on Neurology, Harvard Medical School
Daphne Holt, MD, PhD
Director of the Resilience and Prevention Program, Massachusetts General Hospital; Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
Susan Huang, MD
EVP, Chief Executive, Providence Clinical Network, Providence Southern CA
Keith Isaacson, MD
Director of Minimally Invasive Gynecologic Surgery and Infertility, Newton Wellesley Hospital; Associate Professor of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology, Harvard Medical School
Ole Isacson, MD-PhD
Founding Director, Neuroregeneration Research Institute, McLean Hospital; Professor of Neurology and Neuroscience, Harvard Medical School
Haim Israel
Head of Global Thematic Investing Research, BofA Global Research
Farouc Jaffer, MD, PhD
Director, Coronary Intervention, Massachusetts General Hospital; Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Russell Jenkins, MD, PhD
Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research, Massachusetts General Hospital; Mass General Cancer Center, Center for Melanoma; Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Hadine Joffe, MD
Executive Director of the Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology; Interim Chair, Department of Psychiatry, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Paula A. Johnson Professor of Psychiatry in the Field of Women’s Health, Harvard Medical School
Benjamin Kann, MD
Assistant Professor, Brigham and Women’s Hospital & Harvard Medical School
Tatsuo Kawai, MD, PhD
Director of the Legorreta Center for Clinical Transplantation Tolerance, A.Benedict Cosimi Chair in Transplant Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital; Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School
Albert Kim, MD
Assistant Physician, Mass General Cancer Center; Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School
Roger Kitterman
Senior Vice President, Ventures and Business Development & Licensing, Mass General Brigham Managing Partner, Mass General Brigham Ventures
Lotte Bjerre Knudsen, DMSc
Chief Scientific Advisor, Novo Nordisk
Vesela Kovacheva, MD, PhD
Director of Translational and Clinical Research, Mass General Brigham; Assistant Professor of Anesthesia, Harvard Medical School
Jonathan Kraft
President, The Kraft Group; Board Chair, Massachusetts General Hospital
John Krystal, MD
Chair, Department of Psychiatry, Yale School of Medicine
Daniel Kuritzkes, MD
Chief, Division of Infectious Diseases, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Harriet Ryan Albee Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Bruce Levy, MD
Physician-In-Chief and Co-Chair, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Parker B. Francis Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Katherine Liao, MD
Associate Physician, Department of Rheumatology, Inflammation, and Immunity, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Associate Professor of Medicine and Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School
David Louis, MD
Enterprise Chief, Pathology, Mass General Brigham Benjamin Castleman Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School
Tim Luker, PhD
VP, Ventures & West Coast Head, Eli Lilly
Andrew Luster, MD, PhD
Chief, Division of Rheumatology, Allergy and Immunology; Director, Center for Immunology and Inflammatory Diseases, Massachusetts General Hospital; Persis, Cyrus and Marlow B. Harrison Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Allen Lutz
Health Care Services Analyst, BofA Global Research
Calum MacRae MD, PhD
Vice Chair for Scientific Innovation, Department of Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Joren Madsen, MD, PhD
Director, MGH Transplant Center; Paul S. Russell/Warner-Lambert Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School
Faisal Mahmood, PhD
Associate Professor, Brigham and Women’s Hospital & Harvard Medical School
Peter Marks, MD, PhD
Director, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, FDA
Marcela Maus, MD, PhD
Director of Cellular Therapy and Paula O’Keeffe Chair in Cancer Research, Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research and Mass General Cancer Center; Associate Director, Gene and Cell Therapy Institute, Mass General Brigham; Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School
Thorsten Mempel, MD, PhD
Associate Director, Center for Immunology and Inflammatory Diseases, Massachusetts General Hospital; Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Rebecca Mishuris, MD
Chief Medical Information Officer, Mass General Brigham; Member of the Faculty, Harvard Medical School
Pradeep Natarajan, MD
Director of Preventive Cardiology, Paul & Phyllis Fireman Endowed Chair in Vascular Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital; Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Nawal Nour, MD
Chair, Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Associate Professor, Kate Macy Ladd Professorship, Harvard Medical School
Heather O’Sullivan, MS, RN, AGNP
President, Mass General Brigham Healthcare at Home
Anne Oxrider
Senior Vice President, Benefits Executive, Bank of America
Claire-Cecile Pierre, MD
Vice President, Community Health Programs, Mass General Brigham; Instructor in Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Richard Pierson III, MD
Scientific Director, Center for Transplantation Sciences, Massachusetts General Hospital; Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School
Mark Poznansky, MD, PhD
Director, Vaccine and Immunotherapy Center, Massachusetts General Hospital; Steve and Deborah Gorlin MGH Research Scholar; Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Yakeel Quiroz, PhD
Director, Familial Dementia Neuroimaging Lab and Director, Multicultural Alzheimer’s Prevention Program, Massachusetts General Hospital; Paul B. and Sandra M. Edgerley MGH Research Scholar; Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School
Heidi Rehm, PhD
Chief Genomics Officer, Massachusetts General Hospital; Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School
Leonardo Riella, MD, PhD
Medical Director of Kidney Transplantation, Massachusetts General Hospital; Harold and Ellen Danser Endowed Chair in Transplantation, Harvard Medical School
Jorge Rodriguez, MD
Clinician-investigator, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School
Adam Ron
Health Care Facilities and Managed Care Analyst, BofA Global Research
David Ryan, MD
Physician-in-Chief, Mass General Brigham Cancer; Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Michael Ryskin
Life Science Tools & Diagnostics Analyst, BofA Global Research
Alkesh Shah
Head of US Equity Software Research, BofA Global Research
Angela Shen, MD
Vice President, Strategic Innovation Leaders, Mass General Brigham Innovation
Gregory Simon
President, Simonovation
Prabhjot Singh, MD, PhD
Senior Advisor, Strategic Initiatives Peterson Health Technology Institute
Brendan Singleton
Healthcare Equity Capital Markets, BofA Securities
Caroline Sokol, MD, PhD
Assistant Physician, Massachusetts General Hospital; Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School
Daniel Solomon, MD
Matthew H. Liang Distinguished Chair in Arthritis and Population Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Scott Solomon, MD
Director, Clinical Trials Outcomes Center; Edward D. Frohlich Distinguished Chair in Cardiovascular Pathophysiology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Fatima Cody Stanford, MD
Obesity Medicine Physician Scientist, Massachusetts General Hospital; Associate Professor of Medicine and Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School
Shannon Stott, PhD
Associate Investigator, Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research and Mass General Cancer Center; d’Arbeloff Research Scholar, Massachusetts General Hospital; Associate Investigator, Krantz Family Center for Cancer Research Harvard Medical School
Alec Stranahan, PhD
SMid-Cap Biotech Analyst, BofA Global Research
Marc Succi, MD
Executive Director, Mass General Brigham MESH Incubator; Associate Chair of Innovation & Commercialization, Mass General Brigham Radiology; Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School
Guillermo Tearney, MD, PhD
Principal Investigator, Wellman Center for Photomedicine, Massachusetts General Hospital; Remondi Family Endowed MGH Research Institute Chair; Professor of Pathology, Harvard Medical School
David Ting, MD
Associate Clinical Director for Innovation, Mass General Cancer Center; Associate Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Raul Uppot, MD
Interventional Radiologist, Massachusetts General Hospital; Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School
Chris Varma, PhD
Co-founder, Chairman & CEO, Frontier Medicines
Kaveeta Vasisht, MD, PharmD
Associate Commissioner, Women’s Health, U.S. Food and Drug Administration
Alexandra-Chloé Villani PhD
Investigator, Massachusetts General Hospital; Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School
Kate Walsh
Secretary of Health and Human Services, State of Massachusetts
David Walt, PhD
Professor of Pathology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital; Hansjörg Wyss Professor of Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard Medical School
With the advent of AI in the last 5-7 years in our fields: Pharmaceutical, Life Sciences and Medicine, LPBI Group had launched several initiatives to advance the frontier of knowledge by using our own contents repositories of +8 giga bytes for experimenting with Machine Learning (ML) technologies for Medical Text Analysis.
These AI Technologies include
Natural Language Processing (NLP): Statistical ML and Deep Learning ML
ChatGPT and GPT-4
Generative AI
A quote by Brad Power, Co-founder and CEO, Cancer Patient Lab made in January 2024
LPBI Group is in the admirable position of sitting on a treasure trove of medical literature that would be useful input in the current environment of customized ChatGPTs looking for reliable medical content.
In the Drug Development (DD) field, AI technologies are been employed chiefly, for these tasks:
(a) Generation of molecular information libraries
(b) Explorations and combinatorial experiments on protein structures, and
(c) measurements of biochemical interactions
The A.I. learns from patterns in the data to suggest possible useful drug candidates, as if matching chemical keys to the right protein locks.
Because A.I. for drug development is powered by precise scientific data, toxic “hallucinations” are far less likely than with more broadly trained chatbots. And any potential drug must undergo extensive testing in labs and in clinical trials before it is approved for patients.
“Generative A.I. is transforming the field, but the drug-development process is messy and very human,” said David Baker, a biochemist and director of the Institute for Protein Design at the University of Washington.
As of December 2023,
24 AI-discovered molecules had completed Phase I trials, with 21 of them being successful. This success rate of 80–90% is higher than the historical industry average of 40–65%.
In Phase II trials, the success rate is around 40%, which is similar to the historical average.
A drug that blocks the activity of an enzyme called aromatase, which the body uses to make estrogen in the ovaries and other tissues. Blocking aromatase lowers the amount of estrogen made by the body, which may stop the growth of cancer cells that need estrogen to grow. AI drugs are used to treat some types of breast cancer or to keep it from coming back. They may also be used to help prevent breast cancer in some women who are at a high risk of developing it. Examples of AI drugs are anastrozole, letrozole, and exemestane. AI drugs are a type of hormone therapy. Also called aromatase inhibitor.
Examples of AI drugs are anastrozole, letrozole, and exemestane. AI drugs are a type of hormone therapy. Also called aromatase inhibitor.
More examples of AI Drugs, Drugs developed with AI technologies
#1:
INS018_055
Developed by Insilico Medicine, a Hong Kong-based biotech startup, to treat idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). IPF is a chronic lung disease that causes scarring and can be fatal if left untreated. In January 2023, Insilico Medicine announced positive results from a Phase I safety trial of INS018_055. In February 2023, the FDA granted breakthrough status to a small molecule inhibitor identified by Insilico Medicine’s AI platforms for the drug. As of November 2023, INS018_055 was in mid-stage trials in the US and China, with some results expected in early 2025.
The first fully A.I. -generated drug enters clinical trials in human patients. Insilico Medicine, a Hong Kong-based biotech startup with more than $400 million in funding, created the drug as a treatment for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a chronic lung disease.Jun 29, 2023
Uses predictive modeling to optimize the molecular structure of drugs. AI is expected to integrate more advanced simulation techniques, such as quantum computing, to more accurately predict molecular behavior.
Drug discovery software developer Schrodinger Inc. (NASDAQ: SDGR) stock has been trying to recover after plummeting over 80% off its all-time high of $117 in January 2021. Schrodinger’s artificial intelligence (AI) powered software technology platform utilizes physics-based modeling and sophisticated machine learning algorithms to help clients identify the suitable molecules to treat the desired ailments. Its programs can help predict the behavior of molecules and potential outcomes.
This entails finding suitable molecules that effectively target specific cells and proteins, transcend through cell walls, are absorbed and dissolved well without interfering with other drugs or producing bad reactions to other drugs, and are scalable.
In high-tech labs, workers are generating data to train A.I. algorithms to design better medicine, faster. But the transformation is just getting underway.
By Steve Lohr, Terray Therapeutics campus in Monrovia, Calif., June 17, 2024
According to Grand View Research, the global AI in drug discovery market size was valued at $1.1 billion in 2022, and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29.6% from 2023 to 2030. The report states that the growing demand for the discovery and development of novel drug therapies and increasing manufacturing capacities of the life science industry are driving the demand for AI-empowered solutions in the drug discovery processes.
As this report suggests, AI for drug discovery is clearly a growing field within the biopharma industry. Inevitably, as it grows even larger, we will see more companies come to the forefront of the field, hoping to change the face of drug discovery – and also the biopharma industry as a whole – so that the entire drug development process can become faster, more consistent, more accurate, and more scalable.
The Table of Contents of these two book can be found in our
Spanish-language Edition, as well
Serie E, Volumen 4
Bioimpresión médica en 3D: la revolución de la medicina: Tecnologías para una medicina centrada en el paciente: de la I+D en agentes biológicos a los nuevos … en el paciente nº 4) (Spanish Edition) 2023
Tratamientos contra el cáncer: Metabólicos, genómicos, intervencionistas, inmunoterapia y nanotecnología para la administración de tratamientos (Serie … y la oncología nº 2) 2022
Clarivate was formed in 2016, following the acquisition of Thomson Reuters‘ Intellectual Property and Science business by Onex Corporation and Baring Private Equity Asia. Clarivate has acquired various companies since then, including, notably, ProQuest in 2021.
Clarivate (formerly CPA Global) was formerly the Intellectual Property and Science division of Thomson Reuters. Before 2008, it was known as Thomson Scientific. In 2016, Thomson Reuters struck a $3.55 billion deal in which they spun it off as an independent company, and sold it to private-equity firms Onex Corporation and Baring Private Equity Asia.
June 1, 2017: Publons, a platform for researchers to share recognition for peer review.
April 10, 2018: Kopernio, AI-tech startup providing ability to search for full-text versions of selected scientific journal articles.
October 30, 2018: TrademarkVision, provider of Artificial Intelligence (AI) trademark research applications.
September 9, 2019: SequenceBase, provider of patent sequence information and search technology to the biotech, pharmaceutical and chemical industries.
December 2, 2019: Darts-ip, provider of case law data and analytics for intellectual property (IP) professionals.
January 17, 2020: Decision Resources Group (DRG), a leading healthcare research and consulting company, providing high-value healthcare industry analysis and insights.
June 22, 2020: CustomersFirst Now, in intellectual property (“IP”) software and tech-enabled services.
October 1, 2020: CPA Global, intellectual property (“IP”) software and tech-enabled services.
December 1, 2021: ProQuest, software, data and analytics provider to academic, research and national institutions.[27]It was acquired for $5.3 billion from Cambridge Information Group in what was described as a “huge deal in the library and information publishing world”. The company said that the operational concept behind the acquisition was integrating ProQuest’s products and applications with Web of Science. Chairman of ProQuest Andy Snyder became the vice chairman of Clarivate. The Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition, an advocacy group for open access to scholarship, voiced antitrust concerns. The acquisition had been delayed mid-year due to a Federal Trade Commission antitrust probe.
We are a leading global information services and analytics company serving the scientific research, intellectual property and life sciences end-markets. We provide structured information and analytics to facilitate the discovery, protection and commercialization of scientific research, innovations and brands. Our product porfolio includes well-established market-leading brands such as Web of Science, Derwent Innovation, Life Sciences, CompuMark and MarkMonitor (which they later divested). We believe that the stron balue proposition of our content, user interfaces, visualization and analytical tools, combined with the integration of our products and services into customers’ daily workflows, leads to our substantial customer loyalty as evidenced by their willingness to renew subscriptions with us.
Our structure, enabling a sharp focus on cross-selling opportunities within markets, is comprised of two product groups:
Science Group: consists of Web of Science and Life Science Product Lines
Intellectual Property Group: consists of Derwent, CompuMark and MarkMonitor
Corporations, government agencies, universities, law firms depend on our high-value curated content, analytics and services. Unstructured data has grown exponentially over the last decade. The trend has resulted in a critical need for unstructured data to be meaningfully filtered, analyzed and curated into relvent information that facilitates key operational and strategic decision making. Our highly curated, proprietary information created through our sourcing, aggregation, verification, translation, and categorization (ONTOLOGY) of data has resulted in our solutions being embedded in our customers’ workflow and decision-making processes.
Overview of Clarivate PLC five year strategy in 2019. Note that in 2019 the Science Group accounted for 56.2% of revenue! This was driven by their product Cortellis!
Figure. Overview of Clarivate PLC five year strategy in 2019. Note that in 2019 the Science Group accounted for 56.2% of revenue! This was driven by their product Cortellis!
Also Note nowhere in the M&A Discussion in years before 2023 was anything mentioned concerning AI or Large Language Models.
The Clarivate of Today: Built for Life Sciences with Cortellis
Clarivate PLC has integrated multiple platforms into their offering Cortellis, which integrated AI and LLM into the structured knowledge bases (see more at https://clarivate.com/products/cortellis-family/)
“Life sciences organizations are tasked, now more than ever, to discover and develop treatments that challenge the status quo, increase ROI, and improve patient lives. However, its become increasingly difficult to find, integrate and analyze the key data your teams need to make critical decisions and get your Cortellis products to patients faster.
Cortellis Competitive Intelligence: maximize ROI and improve patient outcomes
Cortellis Deals Intelligence: Portfolio Strategy and Business Development (find best deal)
Cortellis Clinical Intelligence: Clinical Trial Support and Regulatory
Cortellis Digital Health Intelligence: understand digital health ecosystem
Cortellis Drug Discovery: improve drug development speed and efficiency
MetaBase and MetaCore: integrated omics knowledge bases for drug discovery
Cortellis Regulatory: help with filings
Cortellis HTA: health tech compliance (HIPAA)
CMC Intelligence: new drug marketing
Generics Intelligence
Drug Safety Intelligence: both preclinical safety and post marketing pharmacovigilence
Watch Videos on Cortellis for Drug Discovery
Watch Video on Qiagen Site to see how Cortellis Integrates with Qiagen Omics Platform IPA with Clarivate Meta Core to gain more insights into genomic and proteomic data
Understand complex ‘omics data to accelerate your research
Discover why QIAGEN Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) is the leading pathway analysis application among the life science research community and is cited in tens of thousands of articles for the analysis, integration and interpretation of data derived from ‘omics experiments. Such experiments include:
RNA-seq
Small RNA-seq
Metabolomics
Proteomics
Microarrays including miRNA and SNP
Small-scale experiments
With QIAGEN IPA you can predict downstream effects and identify new targets or candidate biomarkers. QIAGEN Ingenuity Pathway Analysis helps you perform insightful data analysis and interpretation to understand your experimental results within the context of various biological systems.
Articles Relevant to Drug Development, Natural Language Processing in Drug Development, and Clarivate on this Open Access Scientific Journal Include:
Live Notes from JP Morgan Healthcare Conference Virtual Endpoints Preview: January 8-9 2024
Reporter: Stephen J. Williams, Ph.D.
Endpoints at #JPM24 | Primed to unlock biopharma’s next dealmaking wave
Endpoints at JP Morgan Healthcare Conference
January 8-9 | San Francisco, CA80 Mission St, San Francisco, CA
An oasis has emerged in the biopharma money desert as backers look to replenish capital — still, uncertainty remains on whether it’s a mirage or the much needed dealmaking bump the industry needs. Yet spirits run high as JPM24 marks the triumphant return of inking strategic alliances and peering into the industry crystal ball — while keeping an eye out for some major M&A.
We’re back live from San Francisco for JPM Monday and Tuesday — our calendar of can’t-miss panels and fireside chats will feature prominent biopharma leaders to watch. The Endpoints Hub provides the ultimate coworking space with everything you need — 1:1 and group meeting spots plus guest pass capabilities and more. Join us in-person at the Endpoints Hub or watch online to stay plugged into all the action.
8 JAN
Welcome remarks
8:05 AM – 8:25 AM PST
Pfizer vet Mikael Dolsten has some thoughts on Big Pharma R&D
Endpoints News founding editor John Carroll will sit down with longtime Pfizer CSO Mikael Dolsten to talk about Pfizer’s pipeline, what he’s learned on the job about preclinical research and development and what’s ahead for the pharma giant in drug development and deals.
Mikael Dolsten
Chief Scientific Officer, President, Pfizer Research & Development
Pfizer
Pfizer Mikael Dolsten: Pfizer produced a series of AI generated molecules with new properties. Sees rapid adoption of AI in the area of drug discovery and molecular design.
8:25 AM – 9:05 AM PST
What pharma wants: The industry’s dealmakers look ahead at 2024
The drug industry’s appetite for new assets hasn’t slowed down. Top business development execs will give their outlook on the year, what they’re looking for and how they see the market.
Glenn Hunzinger
Pharmaceutical & Life Sciences Consulting Solutions Leader
PwC US
Rachna Khosla
SVP, Head of Business Development
Amgen
James Sabry
Global Head of Pharma Partnering
Roche
Devang Bhuva
SVP, Corporate Development
Gilead Sciences, Inc.
Endpoints News
Dealmaking panel
Glenn Hunzinger: if you do not have a GLP1 will have a tough time getting a good market price for your company; capital markets are not where they want to be; sees a tough deal making climate like last year. The problem with many biotech companies are they are coming earlier to the venture capital because of greater funding needs and so it is imperative that they articulate the potential of their company in scientific detail
Rachna Khosla: Make sure your investors are not just CAPITAL PARTNERS but use their expertise and involve them in development issues you may have, especially ones that a young firm will face. The problem is most investments assume what the future looks like (for example how antibody drug conjugates, once a field left for dead, has been rejuvenated because of advances in chemistry).
James Sabry: noted that cardiac and metabolic drugs are now at the focus of many investors, especially with the new anti-obesity drugs on market
Devang Bhuva: Most deals we see start as collaborations or partnerships. You want to involve an alliance management team early in the deal making process. This process could take years.
9:05 AM – 9:20 AM PST
The IPO: How Apogee Therapeutics went public in the most challenging market in years
Not many biotechs went public in 2023. And of those that did, not many have had a great time of it. Apogee is the exception and our panel will offer a behind-the-scenes look at their decision to enter the market and what life is like as a young public company.
Michael Henderson
CEO
Apogee Therapeutics
Kyle LaHucik
MODERATOR
Senior Reporter
Endpoints News
Michael Henderson: Not many biotech IPOs deals happened in 2023. Michael feels it is because too many biotechs focused on building platforms, which was a hard sell in 2023. He felt not many biotechs had clear milestones and investors wanted a clear primary validated target. He said many biotech startups are in a funding crunch and most need at least $440M on their balance sheet to get to 2026.
9:50 AM – 10:10 AM PST
Top predictions for biotech in 2024
Catalent CEO Alessandro Maselli will be back at the big JPM healthcare confab to talk with Endpoints News founder John Carroll about their top predictions of what’s coming up for the biotech industry in 2024. The stakes couldn’t be higher as the industry grapples with headwinds and new opportunities in a gale of market forces. Two top observers share their thoughts on the year ahead.
Alessandro Maselli
President & CEO
Catalent
10:15 AM – 10:35 AM PST
Innovation at a crossroads: Keys to unlocking the value of science and technology
The industry has long discussed the promise of technology and the acceleration it provides in scientific advancement and across the industry value chain. However, the promise of its impact has yet to fully be realized. This discussion will outline the keys to unleashing this promise and the implications and actions to be taken by the biopharmaceutical companies across the industry.
Ray Pressburger
North America Life Sciences Industry Lead & Global Life Sciences Strategy Lead
Accenture
SPONSORED BY
10:35 AM – 11:05 AM PST
Activism and Investing: In conversation with Elliott Investment Management’s Marc Steinberg
Elliott has been behind many of 2023’s highest-profile healthcare investments, including multiple activist engagements and taking Syneos Health private. What has made large healthcare companies such interesting investment opportunities for firms like Elliott? What’s Elliott’s investing strategy in healthcare? And what should companies expect when an activist calls?
Marc Steinberg
Senior Portfolio Manager
Elliott Investment Management
Andrew Dunn
MODERATOR
Biopharma Correspondent
Endpoints News
11:05 AM – 11:35 AM PST
Creating ROI from AI
AI is predicted to transform the way drugs are made, from discovery to clinical trials to market. But beyond the initial hype and early adoption, where has AI made meaningful contributions to R&D? How does it help drug developers advance science? Endpoints publisher Arsalan Arif is convening a panel of leading experts to discuss the state of AI in the pharmaceutical landscape and the outlook for 2024. How does AI impact the drug pipeline, from the early steps of discovery to reducing trial failure rate?
Thomas Clozel
Co-Founder & CEO
Owkin
Venkat Sethuraman
SVP, Global Biometrics & Data Sciences
Bristol Myers Squibb
Frank O. Nestle
Global Head of Research & Chief Scientific Officer
Sanofi
Matthias Evers
Chief Business Officer
Evotec
Arsalan Arif
MODERATOR
Founder & Publisher
Endpoints News
SPONSORED BY
11:35 AM – 12:00 PM PST
Biopharma’s dealmaker: Behind the scenes with Centerview Partners co-president Eric Tokat
Almost every major biopharma deal in 2023 had Centerview’s name attached to it. And much of the time, Eric Tokat was the banker making those deals happen. Hear his outlook for 2024, how transactions are getting done and what’s placed his firm at the center of so much action.
E. Eric Tokat
Co-President, Investment Banking
Centerview Partners
CenterView Partners Eric Tokat feels dealmaking will improve in 2024, given the recent flurry of dealmaking at end of last year and right before main JPM Healthcare Conference. He says Centerview wants to help the biotechs they invest in on their strategic path. This may translate into buyers more actively involved (more than startups want) and buyers now are in the drivers seat as far as the timeline of deals and development.
Is the megamerger dead for this year? He says it is very hard to see two major mergers happening but there will be many smaller and mid size biotech deals happening, but these deals will be more speculative in nature.. The focus for large pharma is top line growth. Most of the buyers have an infrastructure and value is more of buying and dropping it in their business so there is now a huge emphasis on due diligence on whether synergies exist or not
12:00 PM – 12:30 PM PST
Founder, legend, leader: In conversation with Nobel laureate Carolyn Bertozzi
Carolyn Bertozzi’s discoveries around bioorthogonal chemistry won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2022 and are at the heart of new therapies being tested in patients. Join us as we discuss what inspires her and where she sees the next big advances.
Carolyn Bertozzi
Prof. of Chemistry, Stanford University and Baker Family Director of Sarafan ChEM-H
Stanford University
Nicole DeFeudis
MODERATOR
Editor
Endpoints News
Bioorthogonal chemistry: class of high yielding chemical reactions that proceed rapidly and selectively in biological environments without side reactions toward endogenous functions. This is also a type of ‘click chemistry’ in biological system where only specifically alter the biomolecule of interest.
Orthogonal: two chemicals not interacting with each other
Dr. Bertozzi noted she has started a new Antibody-Drug-Conjugate (ADC) company which involves designing with biorthogonal chemistry to make new functional molecules with varying properties
She noted hardly any biologists knew anything about glycobiology when she first started. However now she feels pharma and academia are working very well with each other
Bioorthogonal and Click Chemistry Curated by Prof. Carolyn R. Bertozzi, 2022 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry
The 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded jointly to ACS Central Science Editor-in-Chief, Carolyn R. Bertozzi of Stanford University, Morten Meldal of the University of Copenhagen, and K. Barry Sharpless of Scripps Research, for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.
To celebrate this remarkable achievement, 2022 Nobel Prize winner Professor Carolyn R. Bertozzi has curated this Bioorthogonal and Click Chemistry Virtual Issue, highlighting papers published across ACS journals that have built upon the foundational work in this exciting area of chemistry.
Bioorthogonal reactions are chemical reactions that neither interact with nor interfere with a biological system. The participating functional groups must be inert to biological moieties, must selectively reactive with each other under biocompatible conditions, and, for in vivo applications, must be nontoxic to cells and organisms. Additionally, it is helpful if one reactive group is small and therefore minimally perturbing of a biomolecule into which it has been introduced either chemically or biosynthetically. Examples from the past decade suggest that a promising strategy for bioorthogonal reaction development begins with an analysis of functional group and reactivity space outside those defined by nature. Issues such as stability of reactants and products (particularly in water), kinetics, and unwanted side reactivity with biofunctionalities must be addressed, ideally guided by detailed mechanistic studies. Finally, the reaction must be tested in a variety of environments, escalating from aqueous media to biomolecule solutions to cultured cells and, for the most optimized transformations, to live organisms.
9 JAN
9:40 AM – 10:10 AM PST
Biotech downturn survival school
Our panelists have seen the worst, and made it through to the other side. Join us for downturn survival school as our panelists talk about what sets apart the ones who make it through tough times.
These panalists think it will be specialist capital year to shine while the general capital is still sitting on the sidelines
JJ Kang
CEO
Appia Bio
“2023 was a tough year while 2020 was a boon year to start a company. We will continue to see these cycles; many of these new CEOs have never seen a biotech downturn yet and may not know how to preserve capital for the downturn”.
“Doing a partnership with Kite Pharmaceuticals early in our startp allowed us to get work done without risking a lot of capital, even if it means equity and asset dilution. That makes sense. However even if you are small insist on being an equal partner.”
“There are many investors we talk to who do not want to invest in cell therapy. Too risky now”
Carl Gordon
Managing Partner
OrbiMed Advisors
There are many macroeconomic factors affecting investment and capital today which will carry on through 2024. Not raising money when you do not need money is a bad philosophy. Always bbe raising captial. This is especially true when you have to rely on hedge funds. Parnerships howeve are sometimes the only way for small biotechs to leverage their strengths.
Joshua Boger
Executive Chair
Alkeus Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
Boger: Expect volatility for 2024. This environment feels very different than past downturns.
Even in downturns there is still lots of capital; remember access to human capital is better in a downturn and is easier to access; however it has become harder to get drug approvals
The panelists agree that access to capital and funding will be as tricky in 2024 than 2023. They did
suggest that a new funding avenue, private credit, may be a source of capital. This is discussed below:
When thinking about a private alternative investment asset class, the first thing that springs to mind is private equity. But there’s one more asset class with the word private in its name that has recently gained much attention. We’re talking about private credit.
Indeed, this once little-known investment strategy is now growing rapidly in popularity, offering private investors worldwide an exciting opportunity to diversify their portfolio with, in theory, less risky investments that yield significant returns.
Private credit investments refer to investors lending money to companies who then repay the loan at a given interest rate within the predetermined period.
The private credit market has grown significantly over the past years, rising from $875 million in 2020 to $1.4 trillion at the beginning of 2023.
Please WATCH VIDEO BY GOLDMAN SACHS ON PRIVATE CREDIT
The New Molecule: How breakthrough technologies are actually changing pharma R&D
Join us for a look at how AI, machine learning and generative technologies are actually being applied inside drugmakers’ labs. We’ll explore how new technologies are being used, their implications, how they intersect with regulatory and IP issues and how this fast-changing field is likely to evolve.
Kailash Swarna
Managing Director & Global Life Sciences Clinical Development Lead
Accenture
Artificial Intelligence is making impact in a grand way on biology in three aspects:
Speeding up target validation: now we can get through 300 molecules a day
Predicition like AlphaFold is doing; molecular simulations
Document submission especially with regulatory and IND submissions
Pamela Carroll
COO
Isomorphic Labs formerly of AlphaFold
We were first with Novartis at last year JPM and was one year old but parnering with them in that initial year was very important for sealing the deal.
They are looking now at neurologic diseases like ALS. She wondered whether ALS is actually multiple diseases and we need to stratify patients like we do in oncology trials. Their main competion is the whole tech world like Amazon, Google and other Machine Learning companies so being a tech player in the biotech world means you are not just competing with other biotechs but large tech companies as well.
Jorge Conde
General Partner
Andreessen Horowitz
Need is still great for drug discovery; early adopters show AI tools can be used in big pharma. There are lots of applications of AI in managing care; a lot of back office applications including patient triaging. He does not see big AI mergers with pharma companies – this will be mainly partnerships not M&A deals
Alicyn Campbell
Chief Scientific Officer
Evinova, a Healthtech Subsidiary of the AstraZeneca Group
There is a need to turn AI for real world example. For example AI tools were used in clinical trials to determine patient cohorts with pneumonitis. At Evinova they are determining how AI can hel[p show clinical benefit with respect to efficacy and safety
Joshua Boger at #JPM24 (Brian Benton Photography)
January 12, 2024 09:06 AM ESTUpdated 10:00 AM PeopleStartups
Vertex founder Joshua Boger on surviving downturns, ‘painful’ partnerships, and the importance of culture: #JPM24
While the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference was full of voices of measured optimism, rooting for the market to bounce back in 2024, one longtime biotech leader warned against setting any firm expectations.
Instead of predicting when the downturn may end, Vertex Pharmaceuticals founder Joshua Boger said he advises biotech leaders to expect — and plan for — volatility. Speaking Tuesday on an Endpoints News panel alongside OrbiMed’s Carl Gordon and Appia Bio CEO JJ Kang, Boger shared lessons learned on surviving downturns, striking pharma deals, and the importance of keeping a company’s culture based on his two decades of founding and leading Vertex as CEO from 1989 to 2009. The 72-year-old is now serving as executive chairman of Alkeus Pharmaceuticals, a startup developing a rare disease drug.
“I never experienced a straight line up,” Boger said. “Everything had its cycles, and it was how you respond to the cycle, not by predicting when the end is going to be, but just by responding to the present situation.”
At Boger’s first appearance at the JP Morgan conference in 1991, he said the conference’s theme was the end of biotech financing. Just a few months later, Regeneron successfully went public, rapidly changing the outlook for the whole field.
“We had no idea we were ever going to take public money,” he said. “When Regeneron did their IPO, we went, ‘Whoa, there’s something happening here,’ and we pivoted quickly.”
Vertex went public later that year. Throughout his 20-year tenure, Boger said no pharma company ever made an acquisition offer for Vertex, which now commands a market value of $110 billion and recently won the first FDA approval for a CRISPR gene editing therapy.
“We had an uber corporate policy to always make ourselves more expensive than anyone would stomach,” Boger said.
However, Vertex did strike a range of partnerships with Big Pharmas, which Boger described as a painful but necessary part of running a biotech startup.
“It’s impossible for a partnership not to slow you down,” he said. “You can and should try as hard as you can not to do that, but just count on it. They’ll slow you down.”
Boger said startups should insist on being equal partners in pharma deals, at least making sure they have a seat at a partner’s development meetings.
“Realize they’re going to be painful, it’s going to be horrible, and you need to do it,” Boger said.
While Vertex suffered through layoffs, stock price plunges, and trial failures, Boger credited a focus on culture as key to its long-term success.
“It’s the most important ingredient for a successful company,” he said. “Technology is acquirable. Culture is not acquirable. There are 10 companies that will fail because of culture for every one that succeeds, and the successful companies in retrospect will almost always have special cultural aspects that kept them through those downtimes.”
JPM24 opens with ADCs the hottest ticket in San Francisco
The overall deal flow in biopharma tapered off in 2023 but the big companies sure know what they want (what they really, really want), according to a new report from J.P. Morgan.
And that’s antibody-drug conjugates, which drove a fourth-quarter spike in licensing deal proceeds and provided a glimmer of hope to an industry battered by outside forces and grim financing prospects.
J.P. Morgan’s annual 2023 Biopharma Licensing and Venture Report arrived on the eve of the firm’s famous conference, which is set to welcome thousands of attendees in San Francisco today—East Coast weather permitting.
2023 was tough, but clinical biotechs still had a lot of opportunities to wheel and deal, according to J.P. Morgan. While licensing deals, venture investments, M&A and IPOs were down overall in the fourth quarter, deal values stayed fairly high thanks to a flurry of late-stage tie ups.
Follow the Fierce team’s coverage of the 2024 J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference here.
Biopharma licensing partnerships accounted for $63 billion in total value during the fourth quarter from 108 deals. Just one deal—Merck’s ADC partnership with Daiichi Sankyo—accounted for $22 billion of that. Another huge one was another ADC bet, with Bristol Myers Squibb signing on to work with SystImmune for a total value of $8.4 billion. If you exclude the Merck deal, the total value of these partnerships is still higher than the previous quarter, which ended with $32.1 billion.
The total number of licensing deals compares to 149 in the same quarter a year earlier, 195 for Q4 2021 and 223 for Q4 2022.
As for venture investments, the year closed out with $17 billion total across 250 rounds, thanks to $3.5 billion earned through 79 rounds in the last quarter. Aiolos Bio snagged the title of largest venture round of the quarter with $245 million, which also proved to be the largest series A, too.
There was just one IPO in all of the fourth quarter—Cargo Therapeutics making the plunge for $300 million—and 13 overall for the year. It’s a far cry from the heyday of 2021 and experts are still unsure what 2024 will hold. J.P. Morgan reported $2.5 billion raised from 12 completed biopharma IPOs for the year on Nasdaq and NYSE. Nine out of the 12 companies had clinical programs when they took the leap to the public markets. As of December 13, five of the companies were trading above their IPO price.
As for M&A, December saw a rush of Big Pharmas snapping up companies around Christmas. J.P. Morgan tallied the fourth quarter at $37.6 billion and $128.8 billion across 112 total acquisitions for all of 2023.
AbbVie was the top buyer of the quarter with the two largest acquisitions thanks to the $10 billion outlay for ImmunoGen and $8.7 billion buy of Cerevel Therapeutics.
All of this adds up to 270 total deals in the fourth quarter total, which is lower than the third quarter which exceeded 300.
J.P. Morgan sees some big potential for smaller biopharmas looking for licensing partners, as Big Pharmas have been handing out larger upfront payments for the deals they really want.
Cancer was once again the most in-demand therapeutic areas, reaching a new height of $86.1 billion in 2023. Followed by $21.1 billion for neurological disorders.
For More Articles on Real Time Conference Coverage in this Open Access Scientific Journal see:
The Continued Impact and Possibilities of AI in Medical and Pharmaceutical Industry Practices
Reporter: Adam P. Tubman, MSc Biotechnology, Research Associate 3, Computer Graphics and AI in Drug Discovery
Researchers have been able to discover many ways to incorporate AI into the practices of healthcare, both in terms of medical healthcare and also in pharmaceutical drug development. For example, given the situation where a doctor provides an inaccurate diagnosis to a patient because the doctor had an incomplete or inaccurate medical record/history, AI presents a solution that has the potential to rapidly and correctly account for human error and predict the correct diagnosis based on the patterns identified in other patient’s medical history to disease diagnosis indication. In the pharmaceutical industry, companies are changing and expanding approaches to drug discovery and development given the possibilities that AI can offer. One company, Reverie Labs, located in Cambridge, MA, is a pharmaceutical company utilizing AI for application of machine learning and computational chemistry to discover new possible compounds to be used in the development of cancer treatments.
Today, AI uses have had many other applications in medicine including managing healthcare data and performing robotic surgery, both of which transform the in-person patient and doctor experience. AI has even been used to change in-person cancer patient experiences. For example, Freenome, a company in San Francisco, CA uses AI in initial screenings, blood tests and diagnostic tests when a patient is being initially tested for cancer. The hope is that this technology will aide in speeding up cancer diagnoses and lead to new treatment developments.
The future will continue to bring many possibilities of AI, provided an acceptable level of accuracy is still maintained by AI technologies and that the technology remains beneficial. If research continues to focus on diagnosing diseases at a faster rate given the potential human errors in having an inaccurate or incomplete medical record upon diagnosis, AI could provide an improved experience for patients given the quicker diagnosis and treatment combined with less time spent either treating the wrong underlying condition or not knowing what condition to treat when accounting for an incomplete medical record. If this technology is proven to be successful not just in theory, but in practice, technology would then be available and could be beneficially applied to all diagnoses and treatment plans, across the world.
However, the reality regarding AI development is that its evolution depends on how much human effort is involved in its development. Therefore, the world won’t know or see the full benefits of AI until it is developed and actively applied. Similarly, the impact that AI will have in medical and pharmaceutical practices won’t be known until scientists fully develop and apply the technologies. Many possibilities, including a possible drastic lowering of the cost for pharmaceutical drugs across the board once drugs are much more readily discovered and produced, may carry a profound benefit to patients who currently struggle to afford their own treatment plans. Additionally, unforeseen advances in the medicinal and pharmaceutical fields because of AI development will lead to unforeseen effects on the global economy and many other life changing variables for the entire world.
For more information on this topic, please check out the article below.
Eight Subcellular Pathologies driving Chronic Metabolic Diseases – Methods for Mapping Bioelectronic Adjustable Measurements as potential new Therapeutics: Impact on Pharmaceuticals in Use
In this curation we wish to present two breaking through goals:
Goal 1:
Exposition of a new direction of research leading to a more comprehensive understanding of Metabolic Dysfunctional Diseases that are implicated in effecting the emergence of the two leading causes of human mortality in the World in 2023: (a) Cardiovascular Diseases, and (b) Cancer
Goal 2:
Development of Methods for Mapping Bioelectronic Adjustable Measurements as potential new Therapeutics for these eight subcellular causes of chronic metabolic diseases. It is anticipated that it will have a potential impact on the future of Pharmaceuticals to be used, a change from the present time current treatment protocols for Metabolic Dysfunctional Diseases.
According to Dr. Robert Lustig, M.D, an American pediatric endocrinologist. He is Professor emeritus of Pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California, San Francisco, where he specialized in neuroendocrinology and childhood obesity, there are eight subcellular pathologies that drive chronic metabolic diseases.
These eight subcellular pathologies can’t be measured at present time.
In this curation we will attempt to explore methods of measurement for each of these eight pathologies by harnessing the promise of the emerging field known as Bioelectronics.
Unmeasurable eight subcellular pathologies that drive chronic metabolic diseases
Glycation
Oxidative Stress
Mitochondrial dysfunction [beta-oxidation Ac CoA malonyl fatty acid]
Insulin resistance/sensitive [more important than BMI], known as a driver to cancer development
Membrane instability
Inflammation in the gut [mucin layer and tight junctions]
Epigenetics/Methylation
Autophagy [AMPKbeta1 improvement in health span]
Diseases that are not Diseases: no drugs for them, only diet modification will help
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Robert Lustig, M.D. on the Subcellular Processes That Belie Chronic Disease
These eight Subcellular Pathologies driving Chronic Metabolic Diseases are becoming our focus for exploration of the promise of Bioelectronics for two pursuits:
Will Bioelectronics be deemed helpful in measurement of each of the eight pathological processes that underlie and that drive the chronic metabolic syndrome(s) and disease(s)?
IF we will be able to suggest new measurements to currently unmeasurable health harming processes THEN we will attempt to conceptualize new therapeutic targets and new modalities for therapeutics delivery – WE ARE HOPEFUL
In the Bioelecronics domain we are inspired by the work of the following three research sources:
Michael Levin is an American developmental and synthetic biologist at Tufts University, where he is the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor. Levin is a director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University and Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology. Wikipedia
THE VOICE of Dr. Justin D. Pearlman, MD, PhD, FACC
PENDING
THE VOICE of Stephen J. Williams, PhD
Ten TakeAway Points of Dr. Lustig’s talk on role of diet on the incidence of Type II Diabetes
25% of US children have fatty liver
Type II diabetes can be manifested from fatty live with 151 million people worldwide affected moving up to 568 million in 7 years
A common myth is diabetes due to overweight condition driving the metabolic disease
There is a trend of ‘lean’ diabetes or diabetes in lean people, therefore body mass index not a reliable biomarker for risk for diabetes
Thirty percent of ‘obese’ people just have high subcutaneous fat. the visceral fat is more problematic
there are people who are ‘fat’ but insulin sensitive while have growth hormone receptor defects. Points to other issues related to metabolic state other than insulin and potentially the insulin like growth factors
At any BMI some patients are insulin sensitive while some resistant
Visceral fat accumulation may be more due to chronic stress condition
Fructose can decrease liver mitochondrial function
A methionine and choline deficient diet can lead to rapid NASH development
Acinetobacter baumannii bacteria that are resistant to important antibiotics called carbapenems. Acinetobacter baumannii are highly-drug resistant bacteria that can cause a range of infections for hospitalized patients, including pneumonia, wound, or blood infections.
Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which are resistant to carbapenems. Pseudomonas aeruginosa can cause skin rashes and ear infectious in healthy people but also severe blood infections and pneumonia when contracted by sick people in the hospital.
Enterobacteriaceae — a family of bacteria that live in the human gut — that are resistant to both carbepenems and another class of antibiotics, cephalosporins.
It has been designated critical need for development of antibiotics to these pathogens. Now researchers at Mcmaster University and others in the US had used artificial intelligence (AI) to screen libraries of over 7,000 chemicals to find a drug that could be repurposed to kill off the pathogen.
Liu et. Al. (1) published their results of an AI screen to narrow down potential chemicals that could work against Acinetobacter baumanii in Nature Chemical Biology recently.
Abstract
Acinetobacter baumannii is a nosocomial Gram-negative pathogen that often displays multidrug resistance. Discovering new antibiotics against A. baumannii has proven challenging through conventional screening approaches. Fortunately, machine learning methods allow for the rapid exploration of chemical space, increasing the probability of discovering new antibacterial molecules. Here we screened ~7,500 molecules for those that inhibited the growth of A. baumannii in vitro. We trained a neural network with this growth inhibition dataset and performed in silico predictions for structurally new molecules with activity against A. baumannii. Through this approach, we discovered abaucin, an antibacterial compound with narrow-spectrum activity against A. baumannii. Further investigations revealed that abaucin perturbs lipoprotein trafficking through a mechanism involving LolE. Moreover, abaucin could control an A. baumannii infection in a mouse wound model. This work highlights the utility of machine learning in antibiotic discovery and describes a promising lead with targeted activity against a challenging Gram-negative pathogen.
Schematic workflow for incorporation of AI for antibiotic drug discovery for A. baumannii from 1. Liu, G., Catacutan, D.B., Rathod, K. et al. Deep learning-guided discovery of an antibiotic targeting Acinetobacter baumannii. Nat Chem Biol (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41589-023-01349-8
Antibiotics kill bacteria. However, there has been a lack of new drugs for decades and bacteria are becoming harder to treat, as they evolve resistance to the ones we have.
More than a million people a year are estimated to die from infections that resist treatment with antibiotics.The researchers focused on one of the most problematic species of bacteria – Acinetobacter baumannii, which can infect wounds and cause pneumonia.
You may not have heard of it, but it is one of the three superbugs the World Health Organization has identified as a “critical” threat.
It is often able to shrug off multiple antibiotics and is a problem in hospitals and care homes, where it can survive on surfaces and medical equipment.
Dr Jonathan Stokes, from McMaster University, describes the bug as “public enemy number one” as it’s “really common” to find cases where it is “resistant to nearly every antibiotic”.
Artificial intelligence
To find a new antibiotic, the researchers first had to train the AI. They took thousands of drugs where the precise chemical structure was known, and manually tested them on Acinetobacter baumannii to see which could slow it down or kill it.
This information was fed into the AI so it could learn the chemical features of drugs that could attack the problematic bacterium.
The AI was then unleashed on a list of 6,680 compounds whose effectiveness was unknown. The results – published in Nature Chemical Biology – showed it took the AI an hour and a half to produce a shortlist.
The researchers tested 240 in the laboratory, and found nine potential antibiotics. One of them was the incredibly potent antibiotic abaucin.
Laboratory experiments showed it could treat infected wounds in mice and was able to kill A. baumannii samples from patients.
However, Dr Stokes told me: “This is when the work starts.”
The next step is to perfect the drug in the laboratory and then perform clinical trials. He expects the first AI antibiotics could take until 2030 until they are available to be prescribed.
Curiously, this experimental antibiotic had no effect on other species of bacteria, and works only on A. baumannii.
Many antibiotics kill bacteria indiscriminately. The researchers believe the precision of abaucin will make it harder for drug-resistance to emerge, and could lead to fewer side-effects.
In principle, the AI could screen tens of millions of potential compounds – something that would be impractical to do manually.
“AI enhances the rate, and in a perfect world decreases the cost, with which we can discover these new classes of antibiotic that we desperately need,” Dr Stokes told me.
The researchers tested the principles of AI-aided antibiotic discovery in E. coli in 2020, but have now used that knowledge to focus on the big nasties. They plan to look at Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa next.
“This finding further supports the premise that AI can significantly accelerate and expand our search for novel antibiotics,” said Prof James Collins, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He added: “I’m excited that this work shows that we can use AI to help combat problematic pathogens such as A. baumannii.”
Prof Dame Sally Davies, the former chief medical officer for England and government envoy on anti-microbial resistance, told Radio 4’s The World Tonight: “We’re onto a winner.”
She said the idea of using AI was “a big game-changer, I’m thrilled to see the work he (Dr Stokes) is doing, it will save lives”.
Other related articles and books published in this Online Scientific Journal include the following:
Series D: e-Books on BioMedicine – Metabolomics, Immunology, Infectious Diseases, Reproductive Genomic Endocrinology
The female reproductive lifespan is regulated by the menstrual cycle. Defined as the interval between the menarche and menopause, it is approximately 35 years in length on average. Based on current average human life expectancy figures, and excluding fertility issues, this means that the female body can bear children for almost half of its lifetime. Thus, within this time span many individuals may consider contraception at some point in their reproductive life. A wide variety of contraceptive methods are now available, which are broadly classified into hormonal and non-hormonal approaches. A normal menstrual cycle is controlled by a delicate interplay of hormones, including estrogen, progesterone, follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH), among others. These molecules are produced by the various glands in the body that make up the endocrine system.
Hormonal contraceptives – including the contraceptive pill, some intrauterine devices (IUDs) and hormonal implants – utilize exogenous (or synthetic) hormones to block or suppress ovulation, the phase of the menstrual cycle where an egg is released into the uterus. Beyond their use as methods to prevent pregnancy, hormonal contraceptives are also being increasingly used to suppress ovulation as a method for treating premenstrual syndromes. Hormonal contraceptives composed of exogenous estrogen and/or progesterone are commonly administered artificial means of birth control. Despite many benefits, adverse side effects associated with high doses such as thrombosis and myocardial infarction, cause hesitation to usage.
Scientists at the University of the Philippines and Roskilde University are exploring methods to optimize the dosage of exogenous hormones in such contraceptives. Their overall aim is the creation of patient-specific minimizing dosing schemes, to prevent adverse side effects that can be associated with hormonal contraceptive use and empower individuals in their contraceptive journey. Their research data showed evidence that the doses of exogenous hormones in certain contraceptive methods could be reduced, while still ensuring ovulation is suppressed. Reducing the total exogenous hormone dose by 92% in estrogen-only contraceptives, or the total dose by 43% in progesterone-only contraceptives, prevented ovulation according to the model. In contraceptives combining estrogen and progesterone, the doses could be reduced further.