BioIT World Conference and Expo, held on April 24th in Boston, is one of the biggest conferences that brings in professionals from the biomedical, bioinformatics, and IT sectors to converge, share insights, and explore the advancements shaping the future of Life Sciences. Like every other year, Elucidata attended the conference with a lot of zeal and enthusiasm. Here we talk about the highlights of the conference and our key takeaways.

Key Highlights from the BioIT Expo and Conference: AI in Drug Discovery

BioIT 2024 was especially special for Elucidata this year as our Chief Technology Officer, Swetabh Pathak, delivered an enlightening talk titled 'Navigating the Transition: From Models to Deployed AI in Life Sciences R&D' as part of the 'AI in Drug Discovery' track. This session not only showcased our innovative strategies but also marked our commitment to revolutionizing the field of drug discovery through advanced AI technologies.

Swetabh spoke about how Elucidata is perfecting the blend of data, models, and infrastructure into a seamless ML-ops pipeline designed to predict ADMET (Absorption, Distribution, Metabolism, Excretion, and Toxicity) properties for various compounds.

ADMET is a critical step in the drug development process and applying ML-ops will drastically accelerate timelines.

BioIT Expo and Conference 2024 highlighted AI's transformative role in drug discovery. Key discussions focused on AI's ability to analyze vast biological datasets and accelerate drug target identification and screening processes. Notable contributions from tech giants like NVIDIA showcased advanced AI applications in digital health and medical tech.

The conference emphasized the growing need for AI to advance scientific understanding and efficacy predictions in therapeutics, while also acknowledging existing technological and ethical challenges. Overall, it set a forward-looking agenda for AI-driven innovation in drug discovery.

Takeaways from the Event

1. As expected, GenAI was front and center at this year’s event. But whether your team is building in- house GPT-based tools (I’m looking at you, large pharma!) or utilizing its power on a smaller scale, there is a gap in understanding how credible LLM outputs really are. These new AI tools need clean and linked data and metadata to feed them but getting there is no small feat, which something Elucidata knows a thing or two about!
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2. Data platforms are back! There’s a huge push to FAIR-ify not only newly generated data, but also those historical data corpuses. Since there’s no one stop shop, teams are looking for vendors and platforms that play well with others so they can select the capabilities that make the most sense for their work. After all, sharing is caring!
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3. There is intense interest in improving our usage of clinical data. Unlike preclinical and translational data, clinical trial data requires a higher level of rigor to use responsibly and the red tape has left us with only a narrow interpretation of de-identified data. Can we utilize new technologies and find a way to thread the needle in order to get the most these valuable real-world data? The implications for patients hangs in the balance.
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4. The intersection of biology and information technology has never been more relevant in reshaping the landscape of life sciences. While platforms are indeed back, there is a clear need for bespoke and nuanced solutions as well, and in-house teams need help to build. On the vendor side, the “Wall of Pain” was a highlight; simply a whiteboard that attendees could attach sticky notes on where their data bottlenecks are. Smart market research and product validation!
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5. There isn’t an all in one solution for data management. Some may go 20% of the way for a set of use cases but don’t get close to covering most of them; there is going to be a need for tech stacks for the long term. IT, informatics, and Digital transformation teams recognize this and are building these stacks and integrating them together. Very few are sharing usage statistics however, which may suggest that they are struggling to gain internal adoption.

Elucidata's Role in Accelerating Drug Discovery

At Elucidata, we understand that the cornerstone of effective AI-driven drug discovery is high-quality, AI-ready biomedical data. Our platforms are designed to handle vast datasets, integrating disparate data types from multiple sources, and transforming them into actionable insights. This capability allows researchers to not only identify potential drug candidates faster but also to predict how these candidates will perform in real-world scenarios, a significant advantage in the competitive pharmaceutical landscape.

Our data harmonization engine helps harmonize raw and messy data, processes measurements, links to ontology-backed metadata and transforms datasets into a unified data model ready. You can analyze and visualize these datasets with the help of our tailored visualization solutions, build and train ML models or analyze them for downstream use-cases like target identification, patient stratification, meta-analysis and more.

Elucidata’s participation in the BioIT Expo and Conference was not just about showcasing our technologies but also about demonstrating our vision for the future of drug discovery. The successful implementation of AI and ML in drug discovery processes offers a promising path forward. By reducing the time and cost associated with traditional drug discovery methods, and improving data quality multifold, Elucidata is at the forefront of empowering faster and more efficient therapeutic innovations.

Get in touch with us or reach out to us info@elucidata.io to know more.

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