Welcome everybody to our current session which is coping with advancements progress in the biotechnology industry my name’s Dr NASA Al Jafari I’m a physician with an interest in longevity and today I’ll be the moderator for our session we’re fortunately living in a world where we see a convergence of data
Technology and science which is really lending itself to improve improving diagnosis earlier uh leading to more effective treatments and even preventing and reversing diseases that we couldn’t do beforehand and this is hopefully going to lead to more impactful healthc care delivery now I’m privileged to be joined
By our three speakers today who all occupy senior positions within the farmer industry regionally uh we look forward to hearing their insights into various uh areas within uh the developments of the biotechnology industry but just to set the scene oecd countries are spending on average 8.5% of their GDP on Healthcare and it’s
Estimated 20% is wasted there needs to be change and a lot of the enablers of change we have available to us today we’re going to be touching on topics such as the application of precision medicine and it’s role the uh use of AI technology in drug Discovery and international collaboration and also
Public private Partnerships in fostering Innovation uh so not to waste any more time I would like to intro our first Speaker Alat Barrow she’s the current CEO of Ro farmer Middle East it’s a position she’s held since 2019 having been 20 years in the industry in many different roles she has
Been voted in the top 100 Healthcare leaders and also separately in the top 100 business women in the Middle East Alat can we hear a little bit more about you and what you’re doing in your role as CEO Ro Middle East and also you know how is RO staying on top internationally
And both regionally in this biotech world thank you Dr Naser for the introduction and it’s a great pleasure as well for me to be uh in this panel and in this city that mirrors The Innovation and the progress that we want to see in in healthcare um uh maybe uh
Before dwelling into this topic um uh let me reflect a little bit on where we are coming from uh when I started my career like around 25 years ago I think uh the Middle East in in particular was having an increase in number of population and this was a period that is
Was marked with advanc ment and prosperity uh globalization and at the same time uh an economical advancement that we have seen in the region and this has implied really an importance and imperative for a change when it comes to the Healthcare in order to address uh the challenges the long-standing
Challenges that were there in the uh from the healthcare perspective but as well to thrive and to Pioneer in the healthcare uh segment so that was kind of um a transformational period for many of the Middle Eastern countries however the start of this decade at the
Beginning of 20 20 uh2 um I think there has been an infliction point to many countries of the Middle East when it comes to their Visions so we have seen a lot of government governance uh or governments putting very bold vision and ambitious vision and they have put the
Healthcare at the center of those uh of those Visions uh and we can say maybe the the pandemic was a very unfortunate and unlucky uh situation for uh for the globe however it was a very enabling and catalyzing um Factor uh to propel those visions and to really confirm the
Importance of Health Care in the economies and in the future and the sustainability of um uh of the world uh from us our perspective as a leading company in healthcare uh Rush um uh definitely we have been innovating in many fronts uh when it comes to the
Diagnostic uh pieces or at the same time to the uh Innovation and treatment from oncology ofal ology rare condition Urology and many other uh diseases that we are um innovating uh for however one very important aspect that we believe in is the personalized healthare which tackles many of the pieces that you’ve
Uh introduced in your introduction which is the Precision medicine the technology and other uh aspects maybe to shed the light on the importance of uh of personalized medicine and why we consider as Rush that this this is a very important aspect one very important important piece is that we consider
Every individual as unique so even the patients every single patient is unique so there’s no one size that could fit all and we see that personalized medicine could be a great leverage for us because it will deliver to the patient the best outcome that they will
Be looking for and to the caregiver or as well to the payers or to the investors they could gear their Investments towards the places where they can make the the best differences or the most differences uh in the end and to bring this more to life uh the importance of this personalized
Healthcare let me share with you a personal example or a real life story that I have from my auntie her name is Jam uh my auntie at in her late age of 60 late 60s um she was a very healthy person she led a normal life she was passionate about gardening and farming
And then suddenly she started developing a cuff uh when she developed this cuff uh she took like many of us antiu medicine however her cuff persisted she went to a GP and he told her that there’s nothing to worry about she can continue her Med medication added few stuff as well on on
The medication list and then sent her uh home and he asked her if she persisted the cuff persisted to go back to him then two months uh later she continued to having this cuff so she started losing weight her chest starting having some pain and her family started this is
When they they started really getting worried so she went to a specialist and unfortunately after several Diagnostics and biopsies she was diagnosed with cancer she was given the treatment that was best for her situation but however she was diagnosed in a very late stage and she left us in
A very early uh like phase of of her life if you want to say this is her journey however if I want to uh Leverage like the the knowledge and the technology like we’re speaking about here today I would imagine her her journey would have been different I would imagine that her
Doctor will be able to understand all her uh lifestyle and all the the uh Diagnostics or signals that could be associated with her life through maybe a smartwatch that she would be wearing or any wearable device that she would be wearing he would be then able to predict
Her risk for uh for lung cancer and invite her for an early diagnosis and with that he would maybe catch her uh cancer very early on in in the journey so diagnosing that very early having a comprehensive genomic profiling for her would help him as well understand what
Is the genetic makeup of her uh of her cancer that is really particular for her and with this he could match her type or her profile with the real world data that is existing everywhere and diagnose her early treat her better give her a better outcome and maybe she would have
Been living with us today maybe the second scenario is a little bit imaginary but it’s not very far from our reality today and I think we can we can really um see that very very soon uh so what are we doing as a company in order
To make the life of of patients or my my auntie Jam uh maybe life uh persist or live longer we are doing many many things first we are really leveraging on the technologies that are existing today in order to address um and to enhance our research and development uh
Strategies but at the same time on uh implementing it in the care Continuum uh for the patients and for this uh we really rely on four aspects the first and most important aspect is um relying on the diagnosis and accurate diagnosis for the patients and this is by leveraging techn technology Gene
Genetics analytics computational um uh analytics as well in order to to better understand and have a more accurate uh diagnosis for the patient the second aspect is really Reliance on the real world evidence and Reliance on on the data and we today think and um really uh confident that with having appropriate
Use of the data it will not only help us uh better understand or progress on the uh discovery of the molecules but as well it will help us in the in the treatment third is uh ensuring that patients have access to care wherever they are irrespective from their
Background or where they live or where they come from and finally having a post- treatment monitoring for all of this to happen there’s a very important Catalyst which is a collaboration no one can do it alone and without a collaboration between different partners different uh innovators in the healthcare sector uh
We will not be able to do it so I’m pretty sure that many people in this room maybe share the excitement about personalized Healthcare but I truly believe there’s a lot uh to be done uh in this field and I think that this forum as well could be one of the
Starting point of different collaboration that we can see thank you Alpha and and just coming from the side of a physician certainly on the Diagnostics side there’s even you know a lag between current technology infiltrating regular practice I mean as as I said at the start a lot of this
Technology in these enablers exist I mean I know in our practice we’re using a lot of the liquid biopsying for cancers and you know I’m of the belief that if you screen rigorously and often enough you can prevent cancer and we have that technology a lot of the
Genomics in the oncology treatment it’s available but Physicians are not aware or utilizing or the insurer will not pay for it so unfortunately I guess at the moment there are limitations on the physician side but then also on the payers side thank you and I’m sure we’ll
Touch on many more of the topics that you spoke about my next or our next speaker is uh Alex aliper he’s the co-founder and CEO of in in silico medical uh he has also been ranked in the top 100 leaders in biotech and Ai and also top 20 under 40 execs in
Biotechnology in Silicon medical is probably the the one maybe that many people here haven’t heard of but I’ve had the fortunate insight to seeing the technology you have in your Labs uh and also heard about some of the great work you’re doing tell us what you’re doing over in silicone
Medical sure uh hi everybody I’m Alex uh pleasure to be here in Silicon medicine is an AI powered biot technology company so we develop medicines discover medicines using generative Ai and our AI platform um our priority and our mission as a company is to extend healthy productive l it for everybody on the
Planet and we’re starting going after age Related Disorders so most of our programs and we have over 30 therapeutic programs are focus on age Related Disorders uh our lead program is in phase two in us and in China uh focus on fibrosis fibrosis an underlying cause of
Many diseases it’s one of the Hallmarks of Aging in general um we started our journey back in 2014 when AI was not as topical as it is today and generative fi was only emerging in 2015 you started getting uh more like first generative models and following that in 2017 you had
Transformers so with that onset we immediately started implementing those models in our workflows and building up a platform capabilities to allow us to generate Target hypothesis and mechanistic hypothesis behind the diseases of interest and also then small molecule hypothesis generate small molecules that would modulate the
Disease in the right way and cure the disease so in in our space you know in contrast to Chad GPT it takes a lot of time to validate the answer the generated response of the model so you need to synthesize a mo molecule suggested by the model you need to test
It in the lab you need to make sure it is efficacious in a disease model so that all takes time and resources so we are fortunate enough to start early so we had our time to validate um our models and currently we have over 40 validated models in our pipeline uh
Which are essentially combined in the endtoend uh Phi platform which tackles Target Discovery biomarker Discovery small molecule generation and clinical analytics using this platform uh we have been able to build a strong pipeline so over 30 therapeutic programs from uh 2020 to 2023 um four clinical stage program nine
Preclinical IND enabling programs the rest are coming towards preclinical soon and we set a few records with Gen Pi so we’ve uh demonstrated that you can go from zero to preclinical candidate an IND enabling stage in under 18 months where it typically takes about 5 to six
Years to do that and we can do it at fraction of the cost so atan silica would try to democratize drug Discovery make it affordable there are thousands of diseases without a cure without any treatment option uh the current pace of um pharmaceutical R needs to be
Accelerated with the power of AI and we want to provide more treatment options to patients in need um so that’s our mission that’s our goal and we are applying cut inage Ai and Robotics laboratory robotics to automate this process and deliver more medicin to patients thank you yeah what so what
Happened to you recruiting Sam Alman Microsoft beat you too well as as you know Sam Alman actually is very interested in longevity so he invested in uh retro um and um an agent startup company out of Bay Area right so he’s also very interested in um longevity and
Uh you know we hope to collaborate with him personally as well uh some sometime down the road well and so I’m sure you’re the company that all the big farmer are trying to collaborate and partner with um and last but not least Jean Paul shua he is the MCO lead and MD
For specialty care for sopi Middle East he’s been GM for 18 years and 27 years in the industry he too has also been ranked in the top 100 business Executives regionally uh I’m sure the crowd are very interested in hearing about you but also I believe you are
Currently engaged in a number of transformation efforts across all levels in your company both locally um but also uh internationally just tell us how that fits in with the development of Ando technology thanks a lot um good afternoon everyone um before I start I
Will uh I will just I would just like to start with a with a story actually which is probably what is driving all of us working in the pharmaceutic C and and healthare um that’s the story of of Lamar Lamar she’s um she’s today a seven years old girl she’s going to school
She’s even in grade one and was when she was uh 18 months actually she has been tested with an large liever spleen and then has started for her a very long journey of medical exams appointment with doctors testing until when she was uh she turned out to be
Three she has been diagnosed with a very very rare disease which is called asmd and asmd is a is a very grave rare disease actually with a very poor for prognose and a life-threatening disease for kids during the next year she has gone through different treatment and procedures but unfortunately there was
Absolutely no Treatment available to treat this disease until a year ago where when actually sopi has launched the first and the only treatment for asmd then Lama has been uh became the second patient in the region to receive this uh uh this treatment and um I mean after having been uh severely infected
She has gone I mean she had a lot of difficulties to breathe she has been multiplying actually uh um respiratory infections actually she has been given this this treatment and and just to to illustrate what what is the effect of the treatment I we just called her
Doctor saying that uh now she has changed massively organ omali of liver and spin is gone she used to contract respiratory infection very very frequently now this is just the past she exercises and attend ballet classes like any normal kid she’s like a new girl and
I think that through this story I think we can really understand what we are all thriving and aiming at doing when we work in the in the pharmaceutical industry we call it in sanofi as chasing the miracle of science to improve people life and I think that uh this is really
The illustration and the importance of what we are doing when we talk about innovation when we talk about whatever the way we are doing to research and to develop new treatment um the development of a new treatment takes a long it’s a long journey as well it can take 10 15 years
It’s a significant investment actually sanofi is investing more than six billion euros each year just to research and develop new treatment with a target of developing obviously treatment for disease either which do not for which there is no available treatment or to improve existing treatments actually uh
And we are doing this in a lot of different disas we’ve done this recently in by launching the first biologic treatment to treat atopic dermatitis we have just launched a couple of months ago a new vaccine to treat the Respiratory Syndrome for kids um and I believe that that gives really
The significance and the meaning of what we are doing now Lamar actually she her parents had no insurance and she could not pay for this treatment and obviously I mean um this kind of treatment is uh is unfortunately very expensive as being a very rare disease
Treatment and uh at sopi we have created a program actually and worldwide program uh which is fully financing the treatment and the access to treatment for uh kids actually who cannot afford actually paying for this treatment who have no insurance to cover it and again
Um this is I think uh the second part of of what we are doing here not only researching developing new treatment but making sure that U uh all patients can have access to these treatments what we are doing here in in the region is we have 200 patients
Actually in the UA for example who have included in what we call an affordability program which is helping actually through different mechanism to finan sizeer partially as a fully the treatment for some of those patient who cannot have access to it unfortunately I mean innovating as well
And uh and and working in in healthcare in far actually is also yes using the most up toate technology you talked about artificial intelligence that’s obviously actually one of the very important um new technology that we are using we are using it in in different way as well I mean first helping us
Again to to research and develop new treatment AI is really helping in screening new targeted molecules in spinning up actually the time to to to research in spinning up the time to diagnoses as well um I mean Lamar diagnose came a little bit more than two
Years after she has I mean the first uh symptoms have appeared which is quite quick actually you have to know that for a rare disease I mean a kid can wait for five to seven years before being diagnosed and sometime unfortunately these kids do not have five to seven
Years uh in front of them before they get diagnosed actually and get their treatment so again AI by by screening databases actually um ensuring a faster family screening as well is obviously I mean very much supporting acceleration of of diagnosis it is also helping actually us internally in companies to
Work differently I was mentioning in research but it can also help us uh in manufacturing for example I mean implementing AI in sopi has helped us to with an accuracy above 80% really to better forecast and avoid shortages of treatments actually which as we know I mean since covid has really been a
Significant issue worldwide so all these to say that um he has a usage of new technology uh investing in research um I mean has only one objective at the end of the day is really I mean to make sure that kids like Lamar or or patients
Actually I mean being be them I mean affected in by oncology disease or whatever multipos sclerosis or I mean are not left untreated and uh and this is I believe what we are all doing in the pharmaceutical industry really ensuring that we can discover new treatment and giving access to this
Treatment for a vast majority of patient who need it thank you Jean Paul and you know isn’t the elephant in the room here that you know in the past 50 years uh pharmaceutical drugs have been the sort of tailor two stories you’ve had the kind of glass half full whereby we’ve
Had Blockbuster drugs which have made a massive impact yet on the flip side uh the glass sort of half empty uh we’ve got this arum’s law which is the opposite of Mo’s law where drugs are costing exponentially more and more year after year yet without an increase in
Drugs uh I think also putting it another way uh in in 2010 your top 10 Blockbuster drugs I think these are US statistics treated 40 million people those top 10 Blockbuster drugs these days will only treat 12 million people despite the R&D spend doubling we’ve got a real problem I mean
Investing in a new treatment is a very significant investment right I mean we are talking here between two and four billion euros just for one treatment and we need to understand that out of 100 Mo molecules actually which are screen which are developed only one or two will
Make it to the treatment um so and and and today we are more and more treating very specific disease we are not researching anymore for treatment in know hypertension treating cholester hyper cholesterolemia I believe that doctors already I mean have all that they need actually to treat this kind of
Condition so obviously you are now targeting I mean more rare diseases or Niche disease or to treat a certain part of of a disease like I mean you could say I mean we have a drug to treat breast cancer but obviously now you would be searching for a specific kind
Of breast cancer and to really have a very much targeted treatment so that’s obviously unfortunately significantly increasing actually the cost of development and and as a matter of fact actually the cost of the treatment but again I think that mechanism around it as the one that I was mentioning I mean
Are supporting giving access to to this treatment to to the poorest there are I mean almost all companies have programs actually in in poor countries actually to give access either at at cost of goods either even at I mean for free I mean for some of the for some treatment
Which are so important for them so I think there are a lot of mechanism actually in place today to make sure unfor it’s not perfect but to make sure that no patient with a severe condition is going to be left untreated maybe Dr ner to add to that um
I think JP you you alluded to this in a very comprehensive way as well as uh as International companies our aim is really to follow the science and really to see where is the highest highest unmet medical needs unfortunately those rare conditions have a very high un uh
Need and this is where you require really to invest really higher in the research and development in order to to understand uh a deeper understanding of the disease itself of the biology of the disease itself try one time two times three times and maybe fail several times
In order to reach a stage where you can provide the best Solutions and the best treatment for for the patient and this is what comes behind as well uh This research and I was going to ask I mean there’s huge scope and opportunity I think uh VC companies invested over 51
Million billion sorry in therapeutic based biotech companies last year how how is a company do you decide you know the areas to sort of that are ripe to start first versus kind of the areas where you you really you know should go there yeah for for us as a company uh
Like we have as rush we have 125 years history already in uh in in healthcare and uh definitely uh we have been really uh very well known in following the science so we really follow the science we try to understand uh deeply what are the diseases that uh as I mentioned that
Have still a big unmet medical need and that require um us to be leaning on further uh we have been innovating previously in our um maybe uh Heritage uh we have made great impact in oncology and in cancer therapy we have changed the treatment paradigms and some of our
Innovation have been have became uh kind of um uh uh a standard of care in in many of the cancer diseases like in breast cancer in lung cancer and in many other uh cancers however uh our Focus today is as well to try to support or to help more patients from different
Disease areas like now we are trying to to invest further in oftalmology and uh we are trying as well to think further about the patients for example as I mentioned in rare conditions that really uh still have a lot of unmet medical needs and that require attention of the
Medical uh community and the Healthcare Community so it’s from one side following the science and at the same time uh really understanding what is the unmet medical need in the community that require more attention and and and we know that kind of learning systems are far more
Effective than humans that kind of enter end tasks kind of throughout the process and you know Alex I know your company has partnered with probably more than half now over the top 20 sort of farmer companies uh and I also know that there’s evidence to suggests that that
AI related drug discoveries you’re now kind of harving the time to being clinically applicable to five six years from more than 10 years how how how are you using that technology to assist big farmer right so um as mentioned previously so drug Discovery is first of
All it’s hard right so it’s hard to find like cure a disease to find the mechanism behind the disease partially that’s why the R&D process is so expensive you need billions to to be invested the same time uh that number that billions comes predominantly from high attrition rate so you have to go
Through many many candidates many iterations to get to a clinical candidate and even after that nine of out of 10 candidates clinical candidates will fail in clinical trials um with a current current statistic right so you need to kind of fix this ratio uh unfavorable ratio and uh make it more um
Efficient make make this process more efficient so what we’re trying to do is that we’re trying to deploy AI at the early stage when we discover a Target because Target Discovery is so important so when you have the crescendo moment of clinical development phase two stage clinical trial where you test
Efficacy of a drug so two out of three programs fail on average in in this in that stage and the failure mostly comes from lack of efficacy due to the Target choice so you picked the wrong target uh so we pay extra attention to selection of the mechanism of the disease and once
We uh perform a comprehensive and rigorous process of selection of mechanism we then follow follow up with a generative AI driven chemistry initiative so generate molecules rapidly with uh a perfect profile ad meox profile to get to the candidate as fast as possible and put it in human clinical
Trials so that’s where we have a second component of a platform focus on chemistry and finally we have a clinic iCal analytics component that helps us Dr risk and triage on those programs that have higher chance of succeeding in those phase two stage clinical trials that’s an also a predictive engine we
Deploy so all in all we try to compress the timelines by minimizing the number of molecules we need to go through number of iterations we need to go through in the discovery cycle by incorporating many of those good properties in the molecules we are designing so I think that uh with thei
Platforms like that we can um and to your point by as partnering so we can only fix this um situation together uh by collaborating across Pharma industry across biofarma and healthcare industry uh that’s the only way so we have such a tremendous and untapped pool of many
Unmet medical needs uh on the planet and the population is aging rapidly right so we’ll have more incidents more prevalence of disease with time so we need to be proactive and getting more treatments out that would be efficacious that would tackle not only those um you know huge therapeutic areas like
Oncology where you have half of R&D investment invested only in oncology but also in other neglected disease areas rare disorders even antibiotics which are currently completely neglected by pretty much everybody um so yeah we need to do more we need to apply AI with is where it is shown to be efficacious and
Um we need to collaborate and and how is the regulatory framework keeping up I mean I know I read a statistic that 20 years ago the difference in investment in R&D between the US and Europe was around about $2 billion now it’s up around about $25 billion why is the
Discrepancy between Europe and the US and even the rest of the world and know Asia has become more attractive is what are the market forces at play maybe you guys given the your company’s European based is there is there an issue is that a regulatory
Issue no I don’t think it’s a matter of regulatory I mean uh uh I I mean the registration process for instance I mean is relatively similar and there is not a big gap between the moment you register in the US and the moment where you register in Europe
Actually so I I don’t think so I think it’s uh it’s link as well to the probably I mean the the ecosystem in the US which makes it more favorable uh to uh uh to uh to invest and to develop in this kind of new technology and we know
That that in Europe it’s it’s probably more complicated I just have one very famous example in mind today uh when we understand that uh one of the first company who has been manufact or the first company manufacturing actually and an mnra vaccine against covid actually is a French actually general manager who
Has been trying to invest in France actually but could not get the financing to do it went to the US did it and we see what has been the the outcome so I think that and there are probably I mean a lot of different uh uh stories like
This unfortunately so I think it’s more an ecosystem um and I mean again you beyond Healthcare when you look at the world of new tech of social media and so most of these companies are US based right uh and it’s not a hazard that in Europe basically I mean it’s probably more
Complicated for different reason I mean to to to have this kind of uh of support and financing we are probably more prudent in doing this when is us it’s we are more ravs versus us this is the way I would explain it and that the same probably one of the reason actually that
That could that could explain the figure that you had been giving in healthcare I don’t know if you have different uh I think that’s that’s totally in line with the with the thoughts uh I also heard Alex your co-founder Alex zenov saying that he relocated a lot of your R&D to
China to tap into half a trillion dollars of infrastructure and aund hundreds of thousands of scientists being provided by the government is China the future well China is the present and the future so it is already evident to people who are kind of following the industry Trends right so
Right now what happen what is happening in Pharma is very reminiscent of the uh it Revolution you know cell phone manufacturing Etc where you have an apple model designed in California made in China so the same happening in biofarma and that’s the model that we’re deploying so we can use our AI platform
Anywhere we can use it in the UAE to discover new medicines and by the way this region uh the whole Gulf region has never discovered a medicine put it on the market so we want to change that we want to discover first medicines out of
This region and put it on Market to help patients uh but we Embrace Apple model we can use a our platform here and manufacture validate in China using those tremendous uh facilities that they’ve built even like a single cro there have over 50,000 chemists synthetic chemists it’s Unthinkable to
Have it like anywhere um in the world right so only in China can develop such a tremendous scale and capacity um so we adopt the Apple model fabulous model we design in the UAE we make in China we design in Montreal Canada we make in
China and this is a huge problem for uh barming industry and we must apply all resources to scale this solutions and get more treatments out so that’s that’s our model and I I do think that China is a future we have our fully automated robotics lab in China built in China 800
Square meters of fully automated space no humans allowed inside robots transporting the samples and doing multiomic sequencing profiling uh everything automated and China right now is number one in laboratory robotics uh so not us not Japan not Europe uh they have perfected laboratory Robotics and
If you go to any hotel in China a robot would be delivering your food uh you can walk into elevator in China and a robot comes in and uh goes to a specific floor uh and delivers the food somebody who who for a client so that’s kind of level
Of scale the automation that China brings to the table and um yeah we must embrace it and um utilize it to everybody’s benefit and how are you collaborating with the governments locally I mean I know you’ve relocated to Abu Dhabi uh talk to us how the the government or private sort of
Organizations are assisting you and also I I believe Jean Paul sopi uh is collaborating with do on four key uh areas tell us a little bit about that first of all Alex yeah uh well uh UAE has been uh amazing so we have been here
In for two years now and uh we feel nothing but love and support we’re very grateful to the country with amount of resources and support uh we’ve been provided with uh here you have very pleasant ecosystem of players in healthcare in AI very rich pool of
Talent that you can tap into and uh you know convert people into Healthcare professionals AI professionals uh who are working in biofarma space so very rich talent pool of talent and uh the support has been tremendous uh so we are supported by abudhabi investment office
We have a a facility in Mazda City in Irena headquarter building and we’re also focused on Quantum Computing which is also high priority for the region uh as well not only AI but also kind of Cutting Edge tag which will emerge uh in in the coming you know four to 5 years
It’s inevitable um so yeah we feel very uh grateful uh to the AE to this country and we hope to make a difference hope to create more solutions more medicines generate more medicines for patients here in the region Jean Paul how’s how’s do how are you collaborating well overall actually
First I mean what what the country is doing in when it comes again to Innovation and to use the latest uh uh best practice actually to uh I mean is absolutely amazing I remember I mean few years ago I mean there have already been I mean at the ministry of Affair
Implementing a new system for registration which is allowing actually patients living in Z UI to have access to all Innovation new treatment which is within just a couple of days after I mean the registration has happened in the US so making of the you of the U
Always the second or the third country in the world to have access to the new treatment I mean and and that’s absolutely amazing and that was already six years ago actually um today I mean the country and in particular in Abu Dhabi I must say actually is doing
Really its atutos to really become a very attractive attractive hub for research and development um they are investing significantly actually in attracting this investment and giving them themselves the possibility to really make it happen creating a complete ecosystem Alex was mentioning it actually which is really really
Amazing and and probably really I mean the top class now I mean when you compare to what is existing already in in other countries which have started much earlier um at our level actually we are collaborating with the Department of Department of Health in Abu Dhabi we’re
Doing it as well with the DHA here in Dubai actually in a uh in in using actually artificial intelligence I was mentioning it to improve diagnostic of rare disase we have signed recently A partnership with do and with Saha actually to uh uh really uh have access
To their base the database of data uh being able to screen the data I mean according to a certain protocol and and actually to be able to first of all diagnose better and faster uh either I mean by identifying I mean gens which are causal of of rare
Disease or or whatever the diseases we we’re going to try also to to extend it to diabetes somehow but of course as well to accelerate as well and adapt at best as possible the treatment which will be suitable for a given patient so artificial intelligence here is just key
And critical because you can do things that you could not do before in terms of rapidity in terms of the number of data you’re going to treat in terms of precision of what you’re doing and I can’t wait to see the first outcome of it it’s just started I mean we’ve just
Signed it a couple of months ago so now the time that everything is in place and we can really start the screening of the database but I’m particularly convinced that this is going to significantly either accelerate to diagnose to diagnostic wther even actually help to diagnose very simply I mean patients who
Have not being I mean in family you have kids you have patient who have for different reason actually you are not at all diagnosed and uh and then using this kind of of tools this is going to to help better treat patients and in particular I mean when it come to rare
Disease kids the future is bright and just regarding the data Alat how how well I guess both individually and as a company do you sort of strike that balance between data that’s publicly available say something like you know the UK bio Bank uh which maybe not that usable or clean or necessarily is
Appropriate versus well and also not giving you the competitive Advantage versus generating your own data I think uh data is becoming uh the the very uh important aspect as well in in what we call the personalized Healthcare or what we call like the advanced Healthcare as
Well uh from our perspective as as Rush uh we have a few years ago acquired a company that is called flat iron uh and this company has a huge database when it comes to medical records around more than 100,000 uh database from around the globe where they are able really to to
Make sure first that the data is of quality because if data is not of a good quality it will yield to bad results and at the same time to make it available for the research and for the decision making when it comes to the treatment the other aspect that as well we’re
Working with with is the uh that we’ve we’ve acquired as well foundation medicine which is a comprehensive genomic profiling company that helps us understand better uh the um genomic makeup of a certain disease and uh uh recently uh Foundation medicine and flat iron they came up into uh which are part
Of our group at rush they came up into a collaboration for a project that is called uh Clinic genomic project uh with the intent really to um have uh clean dat data um uh very up to dat like on a regular basis they are updating this data in order to better understand the
Diseases in in in order to make this uh data uh usable for the research and at the same time usable for the clinical uh or the care Continuum uh process so I think just due due to the pressures of time I think we would like to take some uh questions from the
Audience but I hope you’ve been given a nice Whistle Stop tour of uh the rapid advancements within the biotech uh industry and um you know there’s one thing for certain that drug Discovery now and in the future will be very different to our analog approach uh historically um thank you to our three
Speakers uh I’ll hand over to the [Applause] room any questions we need to take oh you will yeah hi good afternoon I would like to ask you as a doctors or CEOs of medical companies yes do you see or predict that sor and sorry please go ahead yeah um I was
Asking about the the emerging of the AI with the medical or biotechnology sector do you see as doctor or CEO of medical companies that AI might hinder the um Workforce the human Workforce or replace it well on the contrary I feel that AI is going to really help us uh big time
In in addressing many challenges that we foresee in uh the word in Discovery I think Alex eluded a lot about this topic but one very important aspect is that with with AI we’re going to be able um and machine learning we’re going to be able to understand to better understand
The diseases and in this way we’re going to be able to um uh really address like some big molecules or bring to life big molecules and at the same time through uh like the DNA encoding Technologies we be able to um really know what are the targets of certain diseases uh that that
Are needed for the future with this we can shorten uh the timeline for the discoveries we can shorten as well the or have better targets for the clinical uh trials and at the same time uh maybe address some regulatory uh issues this will not replace definitely the human
Aspect however it will enable it will accelerate it will create more intelligence into the process that will will spare more more time and will create more efficiency in the system can I ask yeah if I if I can add on I completely subscribe to this it’s not
It’s going to help it’s going to accelerate um it’s definitely not going to replace there are very famous example you can you can find I mean there are some publication around it where AI has helped actually to to make diagnosis that doctors could not do right because actually sometime it’s very difficult
Right I mean I was mentioning the story of lamal and I mean sometime it’s very difficult to diagnose really what is a disease of a precise patient for different reasons um and there has been some experience done actually when you enter all the different medical exam
Results and a lot of different ex I mean uh information within the AI tool and actually the diagnosis has come right which was not done so precisely before so it’s going to be a help it’s going to be an accelerator but let’s not forget that uh health care and Medicine
Actually is first of all something human right I mean with the emotions right um I was recently in the FI in in Saudi and there was a an incredible robot actually I mean a nurse right and which was powered by AI actually and really looking like human incredible really I
Was shocked to see this and and then you are wondering I mean these are I mean this is what we’re going to have in hospitals and I mean it’s incredible I mean and um and the way the I mean I say she actually she’s piing I mean the
Answer she’s giving to questions is that absolutely amazing and in the attend and it was not prepared because we could ask question and she was just answering it was absolutely like in science fiction movie it’s not science fiction anymore it’s it’s a present and someone asked
Actually I mean if he was going to replace normal nurses and it was very funny to get the answer of this powered AI robot who was saying I mean I’m going to help but I will never be able to replace a noral not because I have no
Emotion and I think that she said it all right can I ask another question uh we hear about uh the nano technology and there is a recent um uh concept of nano medicine um is it like normal medicine with like the emerging technology side or what exactly Alex I’ll hand over someone a
Lot smarter than me to answer that well um I do not want to claim that I’m a specialist here right so what uh there are technology that are link to n nanot technology right the delivery system for even RNA vaccines right so you have to formulate those uh delivery deliver is
Essential for Mr vaccines you know fiser bch or Monna uh that’s something that they patent right so the delivery the formulation uh so we know that cases like this exist so you have n Nana delivery system non technology driven Delivery Systems in terms of H Therapeutics so there are many different
Modalities that are linked to this right so there there are radiotherapeutics uh that are mostly oncology specific right you kind of introduce uh radiation towards the side of the tumor um and other very very interesting like cuton Ed uh modalities that exist there uh our company focuses on small molecules right we’re not
Really in that space but we already see kind of cases where AI can help discover those kind of Novel modalities and help design those formulations and deliver those medicines with speed I I I think also a current problem with the way that we practice Health Care is that there
Isn’t often an appreciation of how complex biology is and that you know clinicians are practicing without actually fully really understanding what disease is I mean do we fully under understand what autoimmune conditions are I mean you know I’ve been talking about you know gut permeability and this potentially being a precursor to
Autoimmunity and that still gets ridiculed amongst um rheumatologists and gastroenterologists um I think you know we’re basing disease on subjective symptoms of both the patient and the physician and categorizing it into archaic uh diagnoses that are more than 50 years old so there has to be a change
In the way that we look at uh biology the pharmaceutical industry is clearly doing it but I think the practitioners are still stuck uh in a in the early 20th century um and I think a lot of it depends on the data so we’re talking about Ai and
Machine learning and data crunching but ultimately if you put junk in you get junk out and I think the data points we’ve been using and this is probably again where I AI can help we’re looking at different data targets we’re looking at metabolomics we’re looking at the microbiome we’re looking at proteomics
We’re looking at methylation I think we’re at this inflection point now where that’s where machines will really help in assimilating that data and change the way we think about biology and disease and how to treat it thank you so much I think we’re now out of time maybe
Can we allow another question if there’s another question yeah we cannot say that artificial intelligence is a magic stick that we are expecting many things from artificial intelligence artificial intelligence started with the Primitive man because it’s a very old idea my question is very practical when it it’s
Related to the speakers here because they have extensive experience in La laboratory research what is the ability do you have research or practical experiences or experiments that can show the ability to implement in analyzing the genes or genetics and to predict what kind of diseases that those people will suffer from in the
Future great question uh thank you um so there are many case studies but I’m can I can speak to uh to uh from our experience right so we um in terms of finding targets and uh diseases ACC companying there is a disease called ametropic lateral sclerosis this is a neurological disorder affecting middle
Age and old uh people and this disorder has unknown kind of origin ethology is not known and it’s a big problem to find a new treatment because you don’t have any idea like how to treat it so we published recent Case Study last year in 2022 where we used our platform to
Process through the omix data as you said and uh decipher several novel targets so we nominated 26 novel targets to test and tested them on ALS animal model it was a model in a fly in dropil fly um and out of 26 targets with nominated 21 targets worked in this
Model so and out of 21 targets eight were completely novel unreported previously unreported mechanism behind this disease devastating Disease by the way um so we kind of see already tangible benefits of using AI to identify novel uh truly novel uh hypothesis behind diseases and also
Suggest us what diseases to go for for a given Target mechanism as one of our strategies as a company by the way is to look for targets that would have what would have dual rol in AG in aging aging process and also in the disease it’s important to have a
Connection to the disease so you have regulatory path to towards a market but connection to aging allows you to have a multi much more uh expansive therapeutic potential behind this molecule right so take a recent example a zamic by NOA Nordisk is not currently being used predominantly for on kind of on label
Diabetes right it is used as off label for obesity uh so we want to find those Therapeutics that are targeting disease of origin but might have a kind of a label expansion uh towards the aging and other age Related Disorders and AI can help with that so we have shown and
Published on that so yeah to to your question there are M multiple case studies we have where we conclusively shown how AI can help and this is already kind of the present the future is just a question of how many like challenging conditions like Alzheimer’s and other diseases we can tackle and
Solve uh so that’s a question I just want to add to that I mean regarding the off label I mean probably the only pharmaceutical that has consistently been shown across all species to extend health and lifespan in independent studies is rapamycin calus which was originally well it was
An an antimicrobial which was used and FDA approved as an immunosuppressive but actually they found in a lot lower intermittent dosages extends a health and lifespan I think we can add to that the experience that we’ve had during covid where many medications that had a different uh usage before uh before
Covid that turned out to be life-saving during that pandemic because of the uh real world data and the technology that has been used and the matching of the targets that that Alex alluded to with the with the molecules that existed and that helped saved many lives during that pandemic as well
I think we’re probably going to get thrown out very soon um do we should we we close it there um thanks again to the panel and thanks for the audience for taking part I hope you enjoyed the riveting discussion and I’m sure the speakers will be free at the end to
Corner and speak to individually if you have any questions thanks [Applause] again