BiopharmaTrend.com

The idea of using artificial intelligence (AI) to accelerate drug discovery process and boost a success rate of pharmaceutical research programs has inspired a surge of activity in this area over the last several years. In 2018, things are getting even “hotter” with the increase in the amount of partnerships, investments and other important events, summarized and grouped below into “mini-trends”.

What is a super-platform?

A “super-platform” is a term which describes a relatively new phenomenon in a modern technological world -- an online-to-offline (O2O) type of digital infrastructure, which spans across multiple sectors of economic activity providing a way for users (both businesses and consumers) to operate with multiple resources, products and services within a uniform, standardized, and highly interconnected way.

Imagine, you want to be able to search for information, shop online, pay for products and services, communicate with someone by email, or chat, create and manage text and spreadsheet documents, translate them into any language on the go, store and organize data like photos and videos, find local restaurants and get driving directions, or just entertain yourself by playing games -- and you prefer to have all of that in one place without needing to search for numerous websites and resources? You can do just that in your single Google account. This is what a super-platform does: it provides a way to conveniently engage in totally different types of activity across different sectors.

Today Basel is crowded with some of the top business and research leaders representing a young and rapidly growing industry of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare and pharmaceutical research. They come together to announce mission and launch activities of a global Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare (AAIH), which is to become a leading international organization for advancing artificial intelligence innovations in Drug Discovery, Clinical Research, Diagnostics, Precision Medicine and other key areas of pharmaceutical research and healthcare. The newly formed alliance will be a voice of the industry in matters of education, lobbying for policies and regulations, facilitating investment, and promoting AI-innovations among top drug makers and healthcare institutions.

(Updated: 14.08.2018)

Pharmaceutical companies are increasingly outsourcing research activities to academic and private contract research organizations (CROs) as a strategy to stay competitive and flexible in a world of exponentially growing knowledge, increasingly sophisticated technologies and an unstable economic environment.  

The R&D tasks that firms choose to outsource include a wide spectrum of activities from basic research to late-stage development: genetic engineering, target validation, assay development, hit exploration and lead optimization (hit candidates-as-a-service), safety and efficacy tests in animal models, and clinical trials involving humans.

According to a recent analytical report by Visiongain, drug discovery outsourcing will continue to grow over the next decade and will rise to a $43.7 billion dollar industry by 2026, as compared to an estimated 19.2 billion in 2016 (or $21.2 billion according to Kalorama Information). This is in line with Vantage’s fresh alliance benchmarking study, revealing that over 80% of bio-pharma respondents report increased alliance activity compared to five years ago. Getting ideas and expertise from external sources is a well-established practice in the pharmaceutical industry with about one-third of all drugs in the pipelines of the top ten pharmaceutical companies initially developed elsewhere, according to a 2014 WSJ article by Jonathan D. Rockoff.  

China has been becoming a research powerhouse in many fields of science, but it still is a minor player when it comes to pharmaceuticals. However, recent developments suggest that China’s role in pharmaceutical research may change in the near future.