COVID-19 disrupted oncology clinical trials. More than a year into the pandemic, drug developers and regulators, including FDA, are also looking for ways to catalyze clinical trial innovation with AI and other tech. The FDA has been “vigilant as they always are to make sure that there is strong science, but they are much more…
What’s driving the natural language processing revolution in pharma and life sciences
Pharmaceutical and life sciences companies are faced with a constant stream of new data flowing into often siloed information systems. About 80% of that information exists in unstructured text that is difficult to extract and use, despite its paramount importance in driving clinical and commercial outcomes. As a result, these organizations find themselves increasingly overwhelmed…
How AI technology can democratize clinical trials in oncology
While drug developers continue to develop promising investigational cancer drugs, conducting clinical research in oncology remains difficult. Here’s how AI-enabled software can help. The statistics on inadequate trial recruitment and endemic challenges in oncology clinical trials are well known. They have only gotten worse over the past 20 years. While the number of cancer treatments…
Decentralized clinical trials continue to gain ground
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to fundamental changes in how pharmaceutical companies and physicians interact with patients. And yet — for all of the talk about digital transformation, artificial intelligence (AI) and decentralized clinical trials in medicine in recent years — the adoption of those concepts has lagged. “The reality is that we’ve gone after…
MIT researchers tout new machine learning technique for assessing drug molecules
MIT researchers are touting a new machine-learning technique called DeepBAR that can quickly calculate the binding affinities between drug candidates and their targets. DeepBAR produces precise calculations in a fraction of the time compared to conventional techniques, according to the researchers. They think the software could potentially accelerate drug discovery and protein engineering. “Our method…
How precision drug-dosing supports individualized treatment
The concept of precision drug-dosing has gained ground in recent years, given its ability to boost efficacy and curb side effects. Yet imprecise dosing regimens continue to be common for many drugs, leading to significant rates of adverse drug reactions (ADRs). “ADRs are one of the top ten causes of death in the developed world,”…
Why focusing on the quantity of pharma innovation is misleading
Since the early 2000s, pundits have lamented that there is an innovation crisis in the pharmaceutical industry. One of the most common reasons given is the challenge of bringing new drugs to market. The U.S. Government Accounting Office concluded in 2006 that the “productivity of [the pharma industry’s] research and development expenditures has been declining.”…
10 trends that will matter for pharma in 2021
One silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic is that it has accelerated the rate of change for pharma and life sciences fields in general. The pandemic has forced a rethink of how to manage clinical trials and treat patients in hospitals and their homes. And the breakneck speed of vaccine development in 2020 could potentially…
Researchers aim to speed drug discovery with human-understandable ML models
Researchers at Purdue University have devised chemical reactivity flowcharts and novel machine learning models that could accelerate drug discovery. Although the use of machine learning for drug development has grown, researchers’ ability to understand machine learning recommendations has been limited. In a paper published in Organic Letters, Purdue professor Gaurav Chopra noted that the machine…
How AI could reassure you that COVID-19 vaccines are safe
As governments and health authorities worldwide gear up to deliver potentially billions of COVID-19 vaccine doses, artificial intelligence and data automation techniques could be a powerful tool combating one of the top hindrances to mass vaccination: vaccine hesitancy. In particular, natural language processing (NLP) could help health authorities transform adverse event reports from COVID-19 vaccines…
Turbine secures €3 million EUR seed fund to expand the potential of simulation-first drug discovery
Turbine, a simulation-based drug discovery company today announced the closing of an institutional financing round led by Delin Ventures. The seed fund will be used to redesign the failure-prone oncology drug discovery process into a series of rational steps facilitated by Turbine’s proprietary human cell model and simulation platform. The company’s first institutional financing round…