The Center for Business Analytics is pleased to recognize IOMICS as an honoree of the 2023 Drexel LeBow Analytics 50 Awards. Read more about how IOMICS used analytics to solve a business challenge.
Submitter
Joseph Gormley, AI Technology Consultant
Company
IOMICS
Industry
Health Care and Life Sciences
Business Challenge
Among the highest priorities in drug research today is the development of smarter, faster and more evidence-driven discovery tools and technologies.
Analytics Solution
IOMICS’ AI-based platform for biomarker and drug discovery is driven by three important data science innovations:
- Formalizing biological objective functions for use as control metrics
- Creating predictive models that operate in an automated cycle of exploration and information generation
- Enabling process discovery at the biochemical pathway level (which serves as a proxy for the state of a cell)
In combination, these innovations allow chemical behavior, cellular dynamics and therapeutic effect (e.g., toxicity, efficacy, etc.) to be profiled and optimized for identifying new drug-target candidates in a goal-oriented and more actionable context. Among IOMICS’ successes is the study of biomarkers and, by extension, drug targets for dementia and Alzheimer’s Disease. In collaboration with a top academic medical center, IOMICS’ in silico discovery platform was utilized to identify molecules of interest and support rationalization of their importance in cognitive decline. Multiple actionable proteins were rapidly identified, with their cellular role retrospectively confirmed in independent laboratory experiments (e.g., Nature 570: 332–337), further validating the potential of multiscale computational strategies for drug and biomarker development. IOMICS’ AI-based discovery platform will be applied to initiatives in cardiology, oncology and virology in 2024.
Impact
The importance of AI and discovery automation within health care cannot be overemphasized. Precision medicine, which addresses the unique biology of individuals, will require new methods for rapid prototyping of drug-target candidates that are effective for the millions of new genomic profiles now being obtained in clinics. IOMICS technologies have been driving innovation at multiple NIH-funded academic medical centers and universities since 2014. Smarter AI-based discovery automation strategies, as demonstrated by IOMICS, will have a positive impact on personalizing therapies, reducing cost and time-to-market and improving patients’ lives.