Life Sci AI: The Podcast

In the second episode of the series focusing on the use of AI in drug discovery, Nick is joined by Quentin Perron; CSO of Iktos. Iktos are a French biotech for ligand-based and structure-based de novo drug design focusing on multi-parametric optimization.

Quentin Perron is a medicinal chemist by training. He holds a PhD in organometallic chemistry from the University of Geneva. During his post-doc fellowship at UCLA, he worked on the total synthesis of Brasillicardin A, a complex natural molecule known for having potent immunosuppressive activity. After working as a medicinal chemist in CNS indications at Laboratoires Servier, he switched to data science and chemoinformatics at Quinten, a company specialising in data science services. In 2016, with his business partners Yann Gaston-Mathé and Nicolas Do Huu, he co-founded Iktos, a start-up company developing AI technologies for new drug design. He is now the CSO of the company.

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A special series of Life Sci AI: The Podcast Series looking at AI in Drug Discovery begins with a fascinating episode featuring Dr David Wright, CTO and Co-Founder of Kuano. The discussion delved deep into the revolutionary role Kauno is playing in the Drug Discovery process.

Dr David Wright is the CTO and Co-Founder of Kuano, a startup whose mission is to use a unique combination of simulation and AI to bring quantum detail to drug design. By starting from an exquisitely detailed picture of enzyme mechanisms they are looking to create a new generation of therapeutics, whose current projects include creating novel anti-bowel cancer drugs.

Before co-founding Kuano, Dr Wright used simulation to understand how atomic details impact drug binding at UCL. His journey to Kuano involved collaborating in large international collaborative projects (CompbioMed, CCP-SAS, CHAIN, INSPIRE) that brought together experts from the supercomputing, academic and pharmaceuticals world to advance drug design. His multidisciplinary outlook is reflected in how Kuano is bringing a new perspective to structure-based drug design.

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In this episode, Nick and Dr Bouarfa discuss her journey to becoming a CEO, the uniqueness of OKRA.ai and most interestingly the future of female leaders in a STEM subject, particularly within Life Sciences.

Dr Loubna Bouarfa is the founder and CEO of OKRA.ai - a leading artificial intelligence (AI) company for life sciences, that supports the industry in bringing the right drug to the right patient at speed. Prior to OKRA.ai, Loubna led different machine learning positions in startups and academia. Loubna was a member of the European Union High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence, where she mainly focused on achieving competitive business impact with AI.

She was named an MIT Technology Review Top Innovator Under 35, a Forbes 50 Top Women In Tech, and won several prizes, including CEO of the Year 2019 at the Cambridge Independent Science and Technology Awards and Best Female-Led Startup at the StartUp Europe Awards in 2019. Recently, Loubna has been selected as a European Young Leader (EYL40) for 2022.

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In this awesome episode, Nick discusses with Alex Menys, CEO of Motilent, their current growth and more broadly the state of AI in MedTech.

Alex Menys is the CEO of Motilent and his main focus is around measuring treatment response in Crohn's Disease but he is also actively involved in a range of projects around all things gastro including constipation, gastroparesis, IBS and any disease that features some form of GI symptom. Motilent specialises in the assessment of digestive diseases using medical image analysis. Their primary focus areas include Crohn’s Disease, Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and Gastroparesis although they support a range of projects across Digestive Health.

This is a really intriguing episode because the clinical pathway of Motilent is so complex, and therefore Alex is a huge advocate and very vocal voice for the change needed within the Digestive Health pathway.

In this episode, Nick talks to Albane Grandjean from Gleamer. Gleamer develops medical-grade AI solutions to support radiologists and emergency physicians in their daily work. Their solutions rely on powerful Artificial Intelligence algorithms, to detect and localise lesions on medical images. They have had great success in recent years with their first product, BoneView and they are now working on releasing additional products for utilisation by radiologists.

Albane Grandjean is Head of Marketing & Clinical Affairs & General Manager. With more than 10 years of experience in marketing & commercial roles in Healthcare, Albane brings her passion for innovation in care and knowledge of medical imaging devices.

What is particularly interesting about this episode is how Gleamer has underpinned their development within clinical experts for every product and Albane highlights this as a key to their successes.

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For the second episode of series 3, Nick discussed with Sebastian Durandeu from Feebris the transition into MedTech, what to expect when it comes to documentation, and working with ML on the edge. 

Sebastian is the Head of Software Engineering at Feebris where he leads the software team building the next generation of remote patient monitoring tools using machine learning. He is a software engineer with 10+ years of experience and in the past he has helped numerous companies build applications and services for the Cloud and adopt emerging technologies.

For those who are thinking about making the leap to MedTech, this is a really interesting episode to listen to.

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We are back for series 3 of Life Sci AI: The Podcast. In the first series, we were honoured to be joined by Dr Tim Guilliams, the CEO and Co-Founder of Healx. Healx have created a suite of AI products and platforms to revolutionise the drug discovery process of rare diseases. It is a truly exciting time for Healx as their first process has reached clinical trials!

Tim is a tech entrepreneur from the Cambridge Cluster, passionate about using AI to accelerate treatments for rare diseases. The mission-driven technology company, Healx are pioneering the next wave of drug discovery in order to bring novel, effective treatments to rare disease patients around the world.

In this role, Tim has been listed in The Sunday Times Maserati 100 list of entrepreneurs in 2019, was named as ‘One to watch’ in The Telegraph’s Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders in 2020, and was selected as a member of the Forbes Technology Council in 2022.

Tim is also the Co-Founder and Trustee of the Cambridge Rare Disease Network (CRDN). Prior to Healx and CRDN, he obtained his PhD at the University of Cambridge in the field of Biophysics and Neuroscience, developing nanobody technology for Parkinson's disease. Before moving to Cambridge, UK, Tim obtained an MEng in Bio- and Chemical-Engineering from the University of Brussels.

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In the final episode of series 2, Nick is joined by Dr.Muhunthan Thillai, the co-founder and CEO of Qureight and they discuss the innovative way they are using AI to allow for effective drug development in complex diseases. This is also a fantastic episode for understanding how founders from a medical background have built an AI company. 

Dr.Muhunthan Thillai is the co-founder and CEO of Qureight, a medical technology company in Cambridge which aims to pioneer data curation in complex diseases. By structuring image and biomarker data from biopharma and healthcare institutions, Qureight uses their AI-assisted platform to look for new trial endpoints in complex diseases including Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, Lung Cancer and Pulmonary Hypertension.

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In this episode, Nick Mahoney speaks with Dr Mickael Tardy, the CSO from Hera-Mi. This episode is not one to be missed if you are looking to learn about taking risks and the opportunities available in Europe for international learning in software development and especially in medical imaging.

Mickael Tardy is a CSO of Hera-MI, a medical imaging software company in Nantes (France), building AI-based solutions for healthcare, focusing primarily on breast cancer. 

Mickael studied in Russia and France for his double degree in engineering before starting as a software engineer in medical imaging. After seven years in the field and looking for a new challenge, Mickael joined Hera-MI in its early days and started a PhD in Deep Learning while building the company at the same time. Today, after defending his PhD, Mickael takes care of all the research activities at Hera-MI, aiming for production-ready solutions.

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In this episode, Nick speaks with Lucy Jung, Co-Founder of Charco Neurotech. Charco has created an incredible device that reduces the symptoms of Parkinson’s for patients and helps them live as close to normal lives as possible. Lucy’s passion for bettering the lives of those with Parkison’s is truly infectious, and hopefully, you will all be inspired by this episode.

Lucy Jung co-founded Charco Neurotech after meeting members of the Parkinson's community whose symptoms prevented them from smiling. From then it has been Charco's goal to bring back smiles for people with long-term conditions. With a background in product design, Lucy conceived the CUE1 while studying the Innovation Design Engineering Master's at Imperial College and the Royal College of Art. With the support of some incredible institutions, advisors, and people with Parkinson's, this went on to become Charco Neurotech.

To speak to Nick, please drop an email to [email protected]