Paving A Pathway To Pharma 4.0
Pharmaceutical manufacturers find themselves at a critical juncture. In the past 30 years, pharma has seen some significant ...
Latest Posts
A Race For Better Gene Editing Tech Is On
A transformative technology for gene editing - clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) -- has become ubiquitous, ...
AI For Commercial Life Sciences: 3 Trends You C...
As we enter a new decade, our belief in the the impact of Artificial intelligence (AI) is only ...
The Evolving Pharma R&D Outsourcing Industry: A...
Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly outsourcing their R&D activities, including early-stage research programs, to third party organizations -- academic ...
In The Spotlight
Top AI in Pharma and Healthcare Conferences in 2020 You Can’t Miss
Artificial intelligence (machine learning and deep learning, to be more specific) has become widely discussed topics in the area of life ... read more
Upcoming Events
3rd Global Bioprocessing, Bioanalytics and ATMP Manufacturing Congress
This Congress will explore the novel technologies and manufacturing strategies accelerating the efficient production of next-generation biologics.
With 30+ presentations over two days, this meeting focuses on key challenges within the field, evaluating innovative solutions such as continuous bioprocessing, SUTs, data integrity, PAT and the implementation of industry 4.0, all of which aim to increase the efficiency and yield of therapeutic production whilst maintaining high-quality standards. Once again, this meeting will also feature a track dedicated to the manufacturing of cell and gene therapies, exploring both the regulatory and manufacturing challenges of these complex products.
AI & Machine Learning Convention 2020
The Future is Now
The UK’s most forward thinking event, dedicated to exhibiting technology which is really just beginning to be introduced across hospital services, this truly is a pioneering event that will shape the future of healthcare.
Co-located with the Medical Imaging Convention and the Oncology Convention, join over 4000 medical professionals at the UK’s leading medical event for AI & Machine Learning.
6th Digital Pathology & AI Congress
This Congress has a reputation for advancing pathology practice by exploring the implementation of digital pathology and artificial intelligence to advance patient care.
40+ presentations over two days offer the opportunity to discover more about the latest advances and applications of digital pathology. Learn how artificial intelligence and machine learning is being applied to primary diagnosis and clinical research and how the image-based information environment is transforming the laboratory.
Annual Summit on Drug Discovery Chemistry
The Annual Summit on Drug Discovery Chemistry primarily works on the theme “Scientific Congress on pursuit of wisdom in Drug Discovery Chemistry”. The main outcomes of the conference are sharing the insights, experiences and strategies of experts in drug discovery, discover the latest trends in drug chemistry, know the growing demand for drug discovery and pharmaceutical chemistry, find out how progress is being made in scientific formulation in practice and discover the tried and tested bio availability routes.
7th Annual Peptides & Oligonucleotides Congress
With major developments in the peptide field and with more and more peptide and oligonucleotide therapeutics entering clinical trials, the real promise of peptides and oligonucleotides is starting to be realised. Part of our Biologics Series, this event will take you through the key stages of peptide development from peptide discovery through to formulation and delivery, manufacturing and synthesis, as well as oligonucleotide synthesis, chemistry, formulation, as well as therapeutics and manufacturing.
Clinical Trial Supply New England 2020
Following on from another successful conference Arena International will be returning with full force to Waltham in March to celebrate another edition of the Clinical Trial Supply show.
The event is a 2-day B2B conference bringing together trial sponsors and key stakeholders with industry vendors. We aim to offer case studies and insights into how to effectively manage operational issues across the clinical trial supply china.
6th Annual Single Cell Analysis USA Congress
The congress covers the latest in Multi-Omic Single Cell Analysis - discuss and debate the critical challenges and opportunities in Genomic, Transcriptomics and Proteomics. Updates and highlights in Spatial Transcriptomics, Genomics and Digital Spatial Profiling as well as implications on sample and data analysis. Latest advancements in single cell analysis in drug discovery and development including key therapeutic applications in oncology, neurology and immuno-oncology, and the latest diagnostics development. Overcoming Challenges in library preparation, bioinformatics and multi-omic data integration.
Patient Data Summit
A new event brought to you from Corinium, the data & analytics experts, this summit will focus on how the field is developing within healthcare and how companies can set standards to stay ahead of the curve.
More specifically, we will examine how data & analytics can improve the patient experience and overall lifetime care.
Promo code: BioPharma100 (valid till 2020-04-14)
Read more ›››
6th Annual Next Generation Sequencing USA Congress
Featuring a world-class panel of speakers and 20+ presentations, the congress will cover the latest in the future of NGS and long lead sequencing, and benefit from critical discussions and thought-provoking presentations on Long read sequencing For Human Genomes And De Novo Studies, Data analysis in denovo assembly and structural variants, Bioinformatics and mapping tools. Plus, Deliver Genomic Based Medicine - Applications of long and short read sequencing in the Clinic.
3rd World Congress on Toxicology and Applied Pharmacology
The Toxicology conference is a convergence of various streams as environmental toxicology, clinical toxicology, toxinology, regulatory toxicology, pharmacotherapeutics, drug discovery, ethnopharmacology etc aimed to carve the minds of the attendees with the advancements in every aspect of the vast and vivid fields of toxicology and pharmacology. Strengthen your global ties with the renowned researchers and internationally acclaimed toxicologists and exploit this spotlight on your excelling research.
AI in Healthcare & Pharmaceuticals Summit
Discover the AI methods & tools set to revolutionize healthcare, pharmaceuticals, medicine & diagnostics, as well as industrial applications and key insights. Hear from industry-leading experts on the latest technological advancements and business use cases for 2020!
Promo code: BPT
Read more ›››
6th Digital Pathology & AI Congress
This Congress aim to advance pathology practice by exploring the implementation and use of digital pathology and artificial intelligence to advance patient care.
40+ presentations over two days will offer the opportunity to discover more about the latest advances and applications of digital pathology. Learn how artificial intelligence and machine learning is being applied to primary diagnosis and clinical research and how the image-based information environment is transforming the laboratory.
4th Annual Genome Editing USA Congress
The congress will showcase the latest technologies, drugs and in vivo therapeutic solutions that are being produced by pioneers in the genome editing field. The congress will feature over 30 presentations in a comprehensive conference programme designed to provide an increased knowledge of current trends influencing gene editing research. Key speakers include Directors from Novartis, Pfizer, Harvard, MIT and more.
13th Annual Proteins & Antibodies Congress
Oxford Global’s 13th Annual Proteins & Antibodies Congress will be attended by over 450 visionary leaders to network about the latest developments & participate in presentations from the areas of engineering, bioanalysis, biotherapeutics and bispecifics.
New for 2020 is the introduction of the kick-off sessions, providing an interactive experience for delegates through roundtable & panel discussions.
2nd Annual Bispecifics in Discovery & Development Congress
Oxford Global’s 2nd Annual Bispecifics in Discovery & Development Congress will be attended by over 450 visionary leaders to network about the latest developments & participate in presentations from the areas of engineering, bioanalysis, biotherapeutics and bispecifics.
New for 2020 is the introduction of the kick-off sessions, providing an interactive experience for delegates through roundtable & panel discussions.
Featured Posts
[Interview] The Rise of Quantum Physics in Drug Discovery
![[Interview] The Rise of Quantum Physics in Drug Discovery](/files/blog/20190715_222113.7097_Enric_Pharmacelera.png)
Computer-aided drug design (CADD) is a central part of so-called “rational drug design”, pioneered in the last century by companies like Vertex. Over the last decades, CADD had great influence on the way new therapeutics are discovered, however, it also showed limitations due to modest accuracy of computational tools.
The majority of software tools used for computational chemistry and biology rely on molecular mechanics -- a simplified representation of molecules, essentially reducing them down to “balls and sticks”: atoms and bonds between them. In this way it is easier to compute, but accuracy suffers greatly.
In order to gain adequate accuracy, one has to account for the electronic behavior of atoms and molecules, i.e. consider subatomic particles -- electrons and protons. This is what quantum mechanical (QM) methods are all about -- and the theory is not new, dating back to the early decades of the 20th century.
Becoming Pharma 4.0: How Digital Transformation Is Reshaping Pharmaceuticals
The digital transformation of biopharmaceutical manufacturing is continuing at a rapid pace as companies attempt to mine the sources of data available. Innovations include predictive analytics, big data analytics, and creating the digital plant. Digital transformation offers a mechanism to revise its business model, to improve production processes, to design new drugs faster by using artificial intelligence to screen compounds and to increase responsiveness to customers. Furthermore, the volume of data processed by pharmaceutical firms shows no sign of slowing down. This means pharmaceutical companies must act quickly in terms of building core internal digital capabilities and moving beyond their traditional IT functions to all areas of the business.
The Evolution Of Pharmaceutical R&D Model
There is a plethora of analytics reports, including ones by Deloitte, DKV Global, and Ernst and Young, all pointing out to a declining business performance of the pharmaceutical industry. They all convey a similar bottomline message: the decline is not due to a lack of innovation (the innovations are growing). And not because sales are falling or markets are shrinking (revenues are growing in general, and the markets are expanding with the expanding and ageing population). The key reason of the declining financial performance is the fact that research and development (R&D) costs are growing substantially faster over an average investment period, than the actual revenues over the same period. This kills operational profits, leading to a decline in the overall business gain. A direct consequence of that -- an increasingly stagnating industry, cutting sometimes promising R&D programs, jobs etc.
There are two more relevant questions here:
1) why R&D costs are growing faster than revenues, considering that technological progress is seemingly providing more and more optimal and powerful technologies to pharma companies at a constantly decreasing specific price (e.g. costs of computation, sequencing, screening and many other things are falling), and
2) what to do about it to reverse the decline in pharma industry performance?
Interviews with experts
[Interview] The Rise of Quantum Physics in Drug Discovery
Computer-aided drug design (CADD) is a central part of so-called “rational drug design”, pioneered in the last century by companies like Vertex. Over the last decades, CADD had great influence on the way new therapeutics are discovered, however, it also showed limitations due to modest accuracy of computational tools.
The majority of software tools used for computational chemistry and biology rely on molecular mechanics -- a simplified representation of molecules, essentially reducing them down to “balls and sticks”: atoms and bonds between them. In this way it is easier to compute, but accuracy suffers greatly.
In order to gain adequate accuracy, one has to account for the electronic behavior of atoms and molecules, i.e. consider subatomic particles -- electrons and protons. This is what quantum mechanical (QM) methods are all about -- and the theory is not new, dating back to the early decades of the 20th century.
[Interview] Applying AI To Shape Business Strategies At European Pharma Organizations
![[Interview] Applying AI To Shape Business Strategies At European Pharma Organizations](/files/blog/20191218_145021.3754_unnamed.jpg)
The application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the pharmaceutical industry has become a long-term strategic priority for most companies. However, the efficiency of this endeavor depends greatly on the availability of large volumes of properly curated quality data, which is not always the case.
While pharma organizations generate huge volumes of data across all stages of drug discovery, development, and commercialization, not all types of data are equally useful for building efficient machine learning (ML) pipelines. For instance, it is relatively easier to apply AI-tech to consumer-related business processes, where lots of well-understood and properly labeled data is available, than it is for basic research tasks, where data is complex, often poorly labeled and extremely domain-specific.
The above situation leads to a faster pace of progress with AI application in such areas as financial analysis, consumer-behavior prediction, patient classification, marketing, and so on.
One of the important hurdles that pharma companies are trying to solve using AI tech is brand management. Indeed, understanding peculiar features of various patient categories, their purchasing behaviors, reactions to different products, revealing possible risks and side-effects for each class -- those things become essential for pharma companies to be able to develop and implement truly patient-centric brand management strategies. Luckily, this is one of the most fruitful areas for the application of machine learning (especially deep learning) models.
To get a better understanding of how it can be done, I have asked several questions to Agnieszka Wolk, Senior Director, Data Science, IQVIA, who recently presented this topic at the PMSA 2019 European Summit in Basel, Switzerland. .
[Interview] Demystifying the Role of Artificial Intelligence in The Life Sciences
![[Interview] Demystifying the Role of Artificial Intelligence in The Life Sciences](/files/blog/20191202_161452.5388_OKRA_Technologies_Interview.png)
In this interview, Rasim Shah, Director at OKRA Technologies provided a glimpse into how the company applies state of the art machine learning technologies to solve real world challanges in the life sciences. Rasim also agreed to answer several questions about a more general context of AI in pharma, its current challanges and future perspective, as well as describe the current efforts the European Union puts into supporting the AI ecosystem in the region.
Rasim Shah, Director at OKRA Technologies:
OKRA Technologies is a leading European artificial intelligence (AI) company for life sciences. Our goal is to empower life science executives at their desks or whilst on the move, with explainable AI outputs. OKRA’s solutions deliver suggestions, predictions and explanations to enable life sciences executives and operational teams to drive the right drug to the right patient with humanised and understandable AI outputs. The OKRA engine learns from real-world data, structured, unstructured, clinical, commercial and scientific literature to drive the right insight to the different teams in life sciences. Our deep expertise in AI, combined with in-depth medical and product knowledge from life science leaders, has allowed us to develop and co-create products that can transform the way life sciences approach traditional industry challenges. We focus on operationalising AI in an ethical way by placing users of these systems at the centre.
Editor's Pick: A Video Blog
How AI Is Applied To Metabolomics To Identify New Targets And Drugs
The team at MIT created the most comprehensive database of metabolites, their interactions with proteins, protein-protein interactions, drug-protein interactions, and associations of metabolites with diseases. They then use the obtained interactions map to make inferences about the disease mechanisms and novel targets. With this new technology, the team launched a biotech startup ReviveMed in 2016 having raised $1.5M of funding so far.
How AI Helps Validate Life Science Hypotheses
In this interview, Dr. Jackie Hunter, CEO at BenevolentAI, provides insights into how the company’s AI-driven platform helps scientists create and validate complex research hypotheses faster and more efficiently.
Network Driven Drug Discovery Using AI
“One-target-one-disease” paradigm has been around for decades, prompting numerous drug discovery programs focusing on identifying small molecules for targeting only one specific protein (or other targets) believed to be responsible for the disease mechanism.
Evaxion Biotech Uses AI To Develop Anticancer And Antimicrobial Vaccines
This is an interview with Niels Iversen Møller, a CEO, and Co-founder of Evaxion Biotech -- an immuno-informatics biotech from Denmark.
Evaxion Biotech uses its machine learning-based platform to compare DNAs of tumor cells and DNAs healthy cells and identify mutations that are critical for the disease. This data is further used to design anticancer vaccines.
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