Artificial intelligence, big data and harnessing the bodys hidden drugs

Inside Bergs labs. Courtesy of Berg.

As far as medical science has advanced, weve still not come close to paralleling the amazing natural processes that go on, every day, in the human body.

Berg, a Boston-area startup, builds off that concept of studying healthy tissues to understand the bodys molecular and cellular natural defenses and what leads to a diseases pathogenesis. Its using concepts of artificial intelligence and big data to scope out potential drug compounds ones that could have more broad-ranging benefits, pivoting away from todays trend toward targeted therapies. The companys funded solely by Carl Berg, a Silicon Valley real estate kingpin.

AaronKrol over at Bio-IT Worldpenned a very thoughtful, probing and well-writtenpiece about the company: Berg and the Pursuit of the Bodys Hidden Drugs. He acknowledges the skepticism that comes hand-in-hand with Berg CEO Niven Narains claims: halving the time and cost of bringing a new drug to market, using molecules naturally found in the body to treat intractable diseases like cancer and diabetes.

But if Bergs approach proves to be feasible, it could have pretty far-reachingimplications for drug development, Krol says. Heres why:

Bergs first drug candidate also bucks a key trend in cancer care. Most pharma companies today are looking at narrowly-targeted cancer drugs, meant to treat small molecular subtypes of the disease. This has led to some of the biggest recent advances in oncology, with drugs like Herceptin and Gleevec seeing huge survival gains for their targeted patient populations, but it has also limited the impact of any one therapy.

By contrast, BPM 31510 has a broad mechanism of action, andBergis enrolling patients with any type of solid tumor in its clinical trials. If the therapy does turn out to be among the 10% or so of drugs that make it all the way from Phase I studies to FDA approval, the benefit to patients could be especially large.

Even a skeptic has to hold out a little hope for a result like that.

The companys AI platform, called Interrogative Biology, identifies potential drug candidates faster than human-led R&D efforts, Krol wrote, adding: If even a fraction of those treatments make a real difference to patients, it would represent a genuine advance for the industry.

Of course, this isnt the only company using artificial intelligence and big data computing to identify plausible new drug compounds North Carolina-basedCloud Pharmaceuticals, for instance,is raising $20 million to pursue a similar path.But this concept of in-silico testing is still a nascent field with seemingly few competitors, and it begs closer attention.