Queens-based lab automation company Opentrons has debuted its new Flex robot, with the aim of broadening access to advanced lab automation for life scientists. In a recent email interview, Opentrons CEO, Jonathan Brennan-Badal, highlighted that the Opentrons Flex robot is designed to offer a technically sophisticated, yet economically accessible automation platform for life scientists. The…

Insilico Medicine has made a significant breakthrough with its AI-designed USP1 inhibitor, ISM3091. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has accepted Insilico’s Investigational New Drug (IND) application for this promising drug, marking a significant milestone for AI-assisted drug discovery. “The FDA’s acceptance of our IND for ISM3091 signifies that the FDA recognizes its potential…

In an era of rapid AI progress, the quest to pioneer the first AI-developed drug candidates has led to an increasing number of these drug candidates entering clinical trials. One contender is ulotaront, an antipsychotic drug, that fared well in a phase 3 schizophrenia study published in NEJM in 2020. Sunovion discovered the drug in…

The year 2020 was a watershed moment for many reasons, but notably, it cast a light on the pervasive health and social inequities that have long marred the U.S. The COVID-19 pandemic hit diverse populations disproportionately hard, as Deloitte and others have noted. Additionally, the tragic deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others provoked…

While scientific progress hinges on data integrity, plagiarism, data fabrication and image manipulation and other biomedical research scandals are ongoing concerns. An article in Science recently made waves by revealing startling conclusions from the research of the German neuropsychologist Bernhard Sabel, who developed a fake-paper detector. Publishing his findings in a preprint, Sabel concluded that there…

Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently announced a significant expansion of Amazon Omics at the annual AWS Life Sciences Executive Symposium in Boston. Amazon Omics, which the company introduced last year, helps life science organizations to store, query and analyze genomic, transcriptomic and other omics data. While other tools such as Qlucore Omics Explorer, Genospace, StrandOmics,…

In the quest to outsmart viral foes such as SARS-CoV-2, RSV and influenza, Codagenix, a clinical-stage biotech firm based in Farmingdale, New York, has engaged a unique arsenal: the intersection of synthetic biology and machine learning. Their weapon of choice is a blend of live-attenuated virus design and codon deoptimization technology. Their process involves introducing…

Machine learning algorithms, such as Alphabet’s neural network-based model AlphaFold2, are steadily transforming medical research, shedding light on complex biological structures. A recent case in point involves research using the technology to explore the Commander complex, a 16-protein complex crucial for cellular protein transport processes. This complex is not only vital for normal cellular function,…

Along with predictive AI, generative AI is emerging as a promising tool in drug discovery. Thanks in part to the rise of ChatGPT, interest in the technology in drug discovery is on the upswing. In March, a preprint appeared examining the potential to use generative AI to enable de novo antibody design. Also this year,…

The clinical-stage company Verseon (Fremont, California) is unique among companies exploring the use of AI in drug discovery given its focus on what it calls the “uncharted” chemical space. While Big Pharma companies typically test compounds from their collections for specific diseases, these collections often have constraints and overlapping compounds. Adityo Prakash, CEO of Verseon,…

“Can we treat chronic inflammation in ulcerative colitis by reversing immune cell activation in colonic mucosa?” That’s an example of a biological question that the AI-enabled drug discovery firm BenevolentAI (AMS:BAI) would ask when exploring a new drug target. Incorporating a disease, sign, mechanism and tissue into a single question provides focal points for the…

The pharma industry is embracing artificial intelligence (AI) to streamline drug discovery and development, although adoption remains early. The field, however, is rapidly expanding. The global AI in drug discovery market was worth about $1.1 billion last year but could grow at a 30% clip from 2023 to 2030, according to Grand View Research.  In…

As drug discovery evolves, digital pathology platforms are playing a vital role in streamlining preclinical R&D processes and accelerating drug discovery. Proscia‘s Concentriq for Research reflects this trend. Earlier this year, we profiled PathAI’s AISight, a digital pathology platform designed to support AI-driven research. To learn more about Proscia’s digital pathology technology, we caught up with…

As enterprise AI adoption surges, the life science industry stands at a pivotal juncture. “We are truly at a tipping point,” remarked Najat Khan, chief data science officer at Janssen, during the 2023 Stanford Drug Discovery Symposium. “It’s amazing how quickly we’ve been able to make progress across the whole value chain in terms of…

The pharma and biotech sectors continue to face rapid change. On one hand, top pharma employers have continued to face talent shortages as demand increases for experienced workers. But on the other, the pharma sector has not been immune to layoffs. One factor driving the trend is the increased clip of mergers and acquisitions (M&A)…

Neurodegenerative disease research is witnessing significant advances. To that end, Hong Kong-headquartered Aprinoia Therapeutics is embracing a ‘precision neuroscience’ approach to neurodegeneration diagnostics. The company’s lead program, APN-1607, represents a new generation of advanced tau positron emission tomography (PET) tracers, which play a crucial role in effective and efficient diagnosis of patients suffering from neurodegenerative…

Capitalizing on AI drug discovery, an international group of researchers employed DeepMind’s deep learning-driven AlphaFold protein structure database to swiftly design and synthesize a potential hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) drug in only 30 days. The AI drug discovery project consisted of Insilico Medicine, the University of Toronto’s Acceleration Consortium and researchers including Nobel laureate Michael Levitt.…

At the Nvidia GTC 2023, DeepMind’s Founder and CEO, Demis Hassabis, provided an in-depth look into the seismic potential of their protein folding AI system, AlphaFold. Hassabis said AlphaFold was a contender for the organization’s “biggest project to date.” Hassabis noted that DeepMind’s AlphaFold has made strides in addressing the protein folding problem, a challenge…

AI computing firm Nvidia (Nasdaq:NVDA) and the Chicago-based biotech startup Evozyne have teamed up to develop an AI model for designing therapeutic proteins. Using NVIDIA’s BioNeMo language model service, the companies developed the Protein Transformer Variational AutoEncoder (ProT-VAE) model. The initial focus of the Evozyne research team was on the PAH gene, which governs the…

At the dawn of 2023, 3T Biosciences and Boehringer Ingelheim (BI) revealed a strategic collaboration and licensing agreement focused on the discovery and development of next-generation cancer therapies focused on high unmet patient needs. The alliance unites 3T Biosciences’ 3T-TRACE (T-Cell Receptor Antigen and Cross-Reactivity Engine) discovery platform and Boehringer Ingelheim‘s focus on cancer cell-directed…

Pharma and biotech companies are scratching the surface when deploying artificial intelligence to streamline drug discovery and development. But the AI-enabled drug discovery sector is maturing, according to Chris Gibson, co-founder and CEO of Recursion Pharmaceuticals. More AI validation is coming in 2023 Competition is helping drive the field of AI-enabled drug discovery forward. “Over the last…

Technology enabling the discovery and development of new drugs is rapidly evolving. We asked representatives from KBI Biopharma, Phylloceuticals and Provectus Algae for their predictions on the platforms and technologies that will have the biggest impact on drug discovery efforts in 2023. 1. 2023 could be ‘massive showcase’ for ML in pharma Drug developers are…

Founded in 2017, VeriSIM Life (San Francisco) has a quest to use biosimulation technology to streamline drug discovery and development. The company’s BIOiSIM virtual drug development engine helps pharma and biotech companies optimize R&D spending. The company’s founder and CEO, Dr. Jo Varshney, also wants to help reduce the need for animal testing in drug…

In September, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed the FDA Modernization Act 2.0, which would lift an 84-year-old federal mandate for animal testing for toxicity studies. While the bill doesn’t ban animal testing outright, it would allow drug developers to use alternatives when feasible. The Senate has sent the bill, also known as S. 5002, to…

Most biopharmaceuticals use cloud-based infrastructure at some level. But just how “cloudy” is your business? Many companies are in a hybrid state, on a path from traditional on-premise infrastructure to operating fully in the cloud. That journey can feel arduous, and it may seem easier to pause along the way. But a truly cloud-only approach…