Webinar

Building causal hypotheses in drug discovery

December 05, 2024 04:00 PM Europe/London

The webinar will be held Thurs Dec 5, 2024, 4-5pm GMT, 5-6pm CET, 11am-12pm EST, 8-9am PST.

 

A panel discussion with Nicola McCarthy (Head of Research, Milner Therapeutics Institute), Namshik Han (Head of Computational Biology and AI, Milner Therapeutics Institute) and Ben Sidders (Chief Scientific Officer, Biorelate), chaired by Biorelate CEO Daniel Jamieson.

In this webinar, drug discovery research experts discuss opportunities to use AI and data driven approaches to create more robust models for developing actionable hypotheses. In particular, we dive into the opportunities for biopharma to make better use of data for developing mechanistic rationales which will improve drug discovery outcomes for drug developers as well as patients. The thought-leading panelists bring expertise across computational biology as well as experimental design, in vitro testing and functional genomics screening.

Namshik Han

Head of Computational Research & AI, Milner Therapeutics Institute

I am an experienced computational drug discovery scientist with specializations in machine learning, computational biology, and multi-omics. As the Head of Computational Research & AI at the Milner Therapeutics Institute, University of Cambridge, my responsibilities involve the application of advanced AI technologies to analyze complex multi-modal biomedical datasets. This effort is critical in identifying new disease pathways and mechanisms.

Concurrently with my primary responsibilities at Milner, I hold the position of Associate Faculty member at the Cambridge Centre for AI in Medicine and am an Affiliated Principal Investigator at the Wellcome-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute. My academic contributions are further extended through my role as an Adjunct Professor at Yonsei University College of Medicine.

Outside the academic sphere, I am dedicated to facilitating the integration of academic research with industry applications, particularly in the areas of therapeutics and patient care. With AI set to transform disease identification, drug target discovery, and the overall landscape of patient care, I am committed to ensuring that our collaborators in industry have access to the latest AI technologies. My work also includes developing innovative computational strategies to support our shared objective of discovering new therapeutic solutions through the analysis of large datasets.

In addition to these roles, I have played a scientific role in establishing Storm Therapeutics. I have also co-founded two innovative AI drug discovery start-ups: KURE.ai Therapeutics, which focuses on immune-oncology NK cell therapies, and CardiaTec Biosciences, which is dedicated to developing novel drugs for cardiovascular diseases.

Nicola McCarthy

Head of Research, Milner Therapeutics Institute

Nicola oversees both the wet and dry labs of the Milner Institute, where we are developing our own research programme and target discovery pipeline. The methods and approaches being used are disease-agnostic and we are currently applying these in oncology, respiratory disease, metabolic disorders, infectious disease, inflammatory bowel disease and CNS diseases.

Nicola has a degree in Anatomical Studies and a PhD focused on apoptosis and cancer. She has a wealth of experience from a career in academic, science publishing and industry roles, and joined MTI as our Consortium Manager in 2021. Nicola became our interim deputy director from 2022 to 2023, before moving into her current role as Head of Research

Ben Sidders

Chief Scientific Officer, Biorelate

Dr Ben Sidders, Chief Scientific Officer at Biorelate, has been working at the forefront of pharma data science for the last two decades. Formerly Executive Director and Head of Early Data Science within Oncology R&D at AstraZeneca, responsible for advancing the company’s understanding of disease through computational oncology, Ben also previously spent eight years at Pfizer, and has extensive experience of many aspects of drug discovery for major pharma. He is especially passionate about immuno-oncology, network biology and the role of bioinformatics within drug discovery. Ben has a PhD in Molecular Biology & Bioinformatics from the University of London where his thesis focused on the development of predictive markers for the diagnosis of asymptomatic Tuberculosis. He holds patents for two clinical diagnostics and has authored over 30 scientific publications.

Daniel Jamieson

CEO, Biorelate

Dr Daniel Jamieson founded Biorelate after supporting the successful identification of drug repurposing opportunities with Pfizer in a groundbreaking project to curate the first-ever knowledge graph to represent the pain interactome.