The latest edition of our health and life science partnering event, Imperial Collider, explored new and emerging medical breakthroughs, and the partnerships that are making them a reality. Here are a few takeaways from the day:
Convergence is now the operating model
"You can no longer do it all in one lab," said Simon Youlton, Director of Early Strategic Partnerships at Novartis, who observed that the growing power of newer disciplines such as omics and data science means that therapeutics development depends more than ever on interdisciplinary collaboration
Collaboration is also deepening between sectors. Fiona Marshall, President of Biomedical Research at Novartis, said the multinational has greatly increased its collaboration with universities, investors and biotech companies. "We collaborate with universities to complement our core areas of interest, and we work with investors to co-create companies. We also work broadly in collaboration with biotech companies from early stage discovery through to later stage clinical programs."
This complex new landscape is reflected by Imperial's model of convergence science, which, as Professor Mary Ryan, Vice Provost (Research and Enterprise) explained, deeply integrates disciplines and sectors to tackle real-work challenges at scale. "It's not just embedding machine learning into a clinical trial, or a neurologist alongside someone who does data analysis," added Payam Barnaghi, a professor in the Department of Brain Sciences and convening co-director of the School of Convergence Science. "You start with the problem and forget about the boundaries of the disciplines."
New modalities keep emerging
New therapeutic modalities are continuing to expand which mechanisms medicine can target and how it can intervene. Experts highlighted new treatment options opened up by several new classes of therapy: radioligand approaches that deliver radiation directly to tumours; gene therapies that not only by knocking down proteins but regulating them; CAR-T immunotherapies for solid tumours; and transcription factor approaches that can activate or suppress genes. While these modalities open up previously hard-to-drug biology, they bring new challenges in delivery, targeting, chemistry and manufacturing.
Data is driving precision medicine
Better data is helping to define disease mechanisms and identify patient sub-groups more precisely. In addition to improving patient outcomes, this makes drug development more productive. For teams seeking partners to bring new therapeutic candidates to the clinic, "the more data you can bring, from biomarkers or genetics, the more you can demonstrate and derisk the approach," Dr Marshall from Novartis observed. Better patient stratification also enables better clinical trials. "In many cases, clinical trials fail not because of lack of insights or scale, but because we put people with different pathways into the same cohort," said Professor Barnaghi.
Early intervention is key
The future of medicine is not only about treating established disease more effectively but intervening early. This point manifested in several ways. New tools are making it possible to detect disease earlier: for example, an AI-enabled ECG analysis platform from Imperial spinout Cardiovolt.ai can identify cardiovascular disease risks years before symptoms manifest in patients. Eventually sensors for monitoring health could be embedded throughout the built environment, in a goal being pursued by Imperial's School of Convergence Science.
Early intervention can also mean tackling diseases as soon as they arise. Sadik Kassim, CSO/CTO of Danaher Omics Solutions, discussed the case of an infant known as KJ, born with a rare genetic disease, who became the first patient to be treated with a CRISPR base-editing therapy tailored to his unique genetic mutation. Dr Kassim explained that this required developing a bespoke medicine in just six months, and described Danaher's work on a CRISPR gene-editing platform designed to create tailored treatments without rebuilding the whole pathway each time.
Elsewhere, modern obesity treatments are helping reduce health risks such as diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. Dr James Minnion, Senior Vice President, Research and Development at Pfizer, shared the story of how the Imperial spinout Zihipp was first acquired by Metsera, which was itself subsequently acquired by Pfizer.
The spinout's portfolio of experimental obesity drugs, which could prove more effective than first-generation GLP-1 drugs, caused a $10 billion bidding war between Novo Nordisk and Pfizer. They were developed at Imperial in the lab of Professor Sir Stephen Bloom where Dr Minnion studied and worked for 20 years. "We've been successful because we understood our science, combined with having clinicians who understand the patients, as part of our research group," he said. Linking those together gave us "belief that the market would catch up to our approach to treating patients with obesity".
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