On this episode of The Beat, Daphne joins host Dr. Gautam Gulati to explain how her experience with her father’s autoimmune condition informs her work and why we need to rethink the fundamental categorization of disease. Daphne describes how releasing machines from our preconceptions of what’s important uncovers new science around the drivers of disease and serves as a critical starting point for developing new interventions. Listen in for Daphne’s insight on leveraging machine learning to improve clinical trials and learn why data collection should be part of the fabric of every biopharma company.
Over time, drug development has become more and more challenging.
Success rates of clinical trials hover in the single digits, and the cost of developing a new treatment is greater than $2.5B.
So, what can we do to make drug discovery faster, less expensive and more successful? How might advancements in machine learning and the availability of biomedical data revolutionize the drug design process?
Daphne Koller is the CEO of Insitro, a company that is rethinking drug discovery using machine learning. She spent 18 years as a professor in the computer science department at Stanford before leaving to build the education platform Coursera. In 2016, Daphne returned to her passion for improving human health with machine learning, first as Chief Computing Officer at Calico Labs and then as the Founder of Insitro.
On this episode of The Beat, Daphne joins host Dr. Gautam Gulati to explain how her experience with her father’s autoimmune condition informs her work and why we need to rethink the fundamental categorization of disease. Daphne describes how releasing machines from our preconceptions of what’s important uncovers new science around the drivers of disease and serves as a critical starting point for developing new interventions. Listen in for Daphne’s insight on leveraging machine learning to improve clinical trials and learn why data collection should be part of the fabric of every biopharma company.
Topics Covered
Connect with Daphne Koller
Connect with Dr. Gautam Gulati
Resources
Chasing My Cure: A Doctor’s Race to Turn Hope into Action by David Fajgenbaum
Insitro’s Partnership with Gilead
Introductory Quote
[5:34] “What I really wanted to build was a company that rethought drug discovery and development from the ground up, using machine learning as a foundational tool.”