The tale of digital pharma and biotech in 2023 is one of two realities. In one corner, you have AI and digital-focused startups and sometimes executives at Big Pharma companies with grand AI ambitions proclaiming the power of the technology. But on the other side of the pharma-AI coin is a more cautious crowd. Here,…

Traditionally, the tech and biotech sectors in the U.S. have been concentrated in a handful of regions — most notably in areas such as Boston, Seattle, Silicon Valley and Southern California. But the Biden administration aims to distribute innovation more evenly through the U.S. To that end, the administration has designated 31 tech hubs across…

In the realm of drug discovery, AI is making waves, and 2023 could potentially be a pivotal year for this technology. As the technology enters the popular consciousness, pharma employees are wondering “why they can’t have similar AI-driven tools for their professional tasks,” said Diane Wuest, head of digital R&D at Sanofi, in a recent…

AI in drug discovery is a topic that gets an outsized amount of attention, observes Carl Hansen, CEO of AbCellera, a company specializing in antibody drug discovery. “It’s as if people are saying, ‘AI is here, it’s going to save us. Thank God, we’re finally gonna be able to create drugs,” he said. “To me,…

As the biotech industry matures, several North American cities are emerging biotech hubs, aiming to become the next epicenters of innovation and growth. While traditional hubs like Boston and San Francisco continue to dominate, a new wave of cities is making strides in biotech. For instance, Pittsburgh, an up-and-coming biotech hub, is tapping its biomanufacturing…

Hey there, drug discovery professionals: Ever wondered where you stand in the grand scheme of drug discovery data-savviness? We’ve created a short quiz to help you get an idea. Drug discovery and development is an increasingly data-intensive field, underscoring the need for data science to be a core drug discovery discipline. The industry has taken…

Founded in 2008, Ginkgo Bioworks’ stock jumped almost 25% on August 29, hitting $2.22, after unveiling a five-year partnership with Google Cloud. The partnership centers around the development of novel AI tools for biology and biosecurity. In particular, Ginkgo hopes to further its mission to make biology easier to engineer in the AI era. Opting…

Less than a week after announcing that it has secured $255 million in Series C funding, South San Francisco-based startup Cellares has revealed that Bristol Myers Squibb has joined its Technology Adoption Partnership (TAP) program. To date, the company has raised more than $355 million in total financing. As part of the TAP program, Bristol…

The biotech industry is facing a reckoning in 2023. To date, roughly 100 biopharmas have cut workers this year, matching the total number of layoffs in the sector in 2022. Many biotech startups have been hit hard. The wave of job cuts comes on the heels of a biotech boom following the COVID-19 pandemic, when…

The venture capital firm Artis Ventures, founded in 2001, coined the term “techbio” sector to describe biotech platforms where technology and engineering take the lead in advancing drug discovery and biomanufacturing. In circa 2019, the firm contributed to shaping the techbio landscape by setting up venture capital fund named Artis techbio that bridges the gap…

On a recent visit to Nvidia’s headquarters in Santa Clara, I had the chance to speak with Kimberly Powell, the company’s vice president and general manager of healthcare. After asking about the pharma industry’s surging interest in AI, Powell remarked, “Every pharma knows who Nvidia is now.” Curious, I asked her, “How long has that…

AI algorithms offer a myriad of advantages for clinical trials. AI techniques can, for instance, support patient enrollment and site selection, improve data quality and enhance patient outcomes. AI algorithms — combined with an effective digital infrastructure — can also help aggregate and manage clinical trial data in real time, as Deloitte has noted. Last…

Pharma and biotech companies have had a spectrum of responses to the surge in generative artificial intelligence (AI). A recent Washington Post article describes an unnamed biotech firm that banned employees from using OpenAI’s ChatGPT despite its capability to bolster productivity given concerns over potential data leaks. At the same time, the burgeoning AI landscape…

Life sciences commercial services company Eversana is one of the latest to throw its hat into the generative AI ring. Tapping a partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Everasana is focusing on developing generative AI technologies in the pharmaceutical industry. Also this month, the startup Synthetica Bio announced it would use generative AI to boost…

The journey to developing a successful drug, theoretically, may appear linear: you discover the right drug, find the suitable patient and administer it at the right time. The reality, however, often deviates from this straightforward path. Aligning these three variables remains notoriously difficult, often leading to elongated timelines strewn with failures, sometimes extending over a…

Today, the pharma sector, like many others, appears to be on the cusp of a transformation thanks to the influence of automation on drug discovery careers. Companies ranging from Insilico Medicine to Big Pharma firms like Janssen and Sanofi are putting AI at the heart of their operations. Many are increasingly recruiting workers from the…

The French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi has unveiled a new AI-powered app called Plai, developed in partnership with AI platform Aily Labs. This move is part of Sanofi’s plan to become the pioneer in fully integrating AI into all operations, according to CEO Paul Hudson. Plai, designed to compile and process Sanofi’s internal data from various…

Top pharmaceutical companies sponsor over a hundred clinical trials annually, generating vast amounts of data. Harnessing this deluge is a monumental task. eClinical Solutions, led by CEO Raj Indupuri, tackles this through advanced applications of data analytics and machine learning with a strong emphasis on AI in clinical trials optimization. Specifically, eClinical Solutions taps AI/ML…

Thanks to automation in pharmacovigilance, the next generation of safety is here — and with it, there is an immense opportunity for firms that can change how they work and maximize the opportunity automation creates. Leading safety teams are seeing up to 80% efficiency gains on key workflows by investing in touchless case processing, automating…

In the rapidly evolving landscape of quantum computing, Microsoft is pushing the boundaries with its Azure Quantum platform. As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently announced, “Our goal is to compress the next 250 years of chemistry and material science progress into the next 25,” Nadella said. The executive also noted that, thanks to recent advances…

Insilico Medicine, an AI-based biotech startup, announced details of their first AI-designed drug candidate to enter human clinical trials. INS018_055 is an experimental treatment for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a rare lung disease. Through their Insilico AI-driven drug discovery platform, they discovered and designed INS018_055 in just 30 months, significantly faster than the industry average. Phase…

The AI market is witnessing meteoric growth, with projections hinting at a potentially staggering increase over the next decade. Against this backdrop of rapid AI evolution, we recently spoke with Tehsin Syed, general manager of AWS Health. Syed shared that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is seeing growing interest from Big Pharma firms. “Nine of the…

The meteoric rise of the AI sector is hard to fathom. Projections from Precedence Research suggest that the global AI market could balloon by 2600% from 2022 to 2032, hitting $1.87 trillion — an annual growth rate of 39%. In pharma, AI and data science demand is surging though overall growth is sluggish. Despite advances…

Quantum computing — described by pop astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson as “computing with atoms” — is an emerging technology with a potential for immense computational speed and power. For some problems, quantum computers can be exponentially faster than classical computers, while for others the speedup may be more measured. The promise for drug discovery could…

Emerging as a spinoff from Alphabet’s experimental division X, SandboxAQ recently pulled back the curtain on its latest endeavor —  the biopharma molecular simulation division AQBioSim. The venture has attracted investments from significant figures like former Alphabet CEO Eric Schmidt, who is now the chair of Sandbox AQ, and Salesforce.com Inc. founder Marc Benioff’s Time…