Google Cloud Launches New AI-powered Tools to Help Precision MedicineGoogle Cloud Launches AI-powered Solutions to Safely Accelerate Drug Discovery and Precision MedicineCerevel and Pfizer are using the Target and Lead Identification
Suite—and Colossal Biosciences is adopting the Multiomics Suite—to bring
therapeutics to market faster Google Cloud announced two new AI-powered life sciences solutions to
accelerate drug discovery and precision medicine for biotech companies,
pharmaceutical firms, and public sector organizations. Available
worldwide today, the Target and Lead Identification Suite helps
researchers better identify the function of amino acids and predict the
structure of proteins; and the Multiomics Suite accelerates the
discovery and interpretation of genomic data, helping companies design
precision treatments.
"We've long been involved with creating new tools for understanding and working with the code of life, like high performance computing for genomic analytics, and artificial intelligence that can predict three-dimensional models of proteins," said Shweta Maniar, global director, Life Sciences Strategy and Solutions, Google Cloud. "These new solutions launching today can transform life sciences organizations by accelerating drug discovery and bringing therapeutics to market faster. When patients are waiting for that life-saving treatment in cancer care or that quality-of-life medicine for migraine headaches, this faster time-to-market can have an incredibly positive impact on lives." Speeding up target and lead identification is critical for the race
to drug discovery. Currently, developing a new drug from an original
idea to the launch of a finished product is a complex process that can
take 12–15 years and cost more than $1 billion, according to the British Journal of Pharmacology.
In addition, identifying a biological target involved in the disease
that is viable for drug intervention can take up to 12 months (NIH, National Center for Biotechnology Information).
at the same time, most companies use X-ray crystallography and nuclear
magnetic resonance (NMR) to determine protein 3D structures, but this
has a high ratio of failures. Finally, once the drug discovery process
is underway, it's not easy to scale supporting technology up or down
based on demand.
Google Cloud's Target and Lead Identification Suite enables biopharma companies to bring therapeutics to market faster by enabling more efficient in silico drug design. Its target identification will help companies quickly predict antibody structures, assess the structure and function of amino acid mutagenesis, and accelerate de novo protein design. This solution also enables lead optimization that can be used to discover novel, high-quality candidates at low cost for Quantitative Structure Activity Relationship (QSAR) studies or for Free Energy Perturbation (FEP) calculations. The Target and Lead Identification Suite includes:
Early adopters for the Target and Lead Identification Suite include multinational pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, and industry leading biotech companies like Cerevel. "We are partnering with Google on exploring how AlphaFold2 can potentially accelerate our drug discovery process, speeding up our researchers' ability to conduct their experiments on Google Cloud's scalable, accelerator-optimized compute platform," said Nicholas Labello, sr. principal computational scientist at Pfizer, Inc. "At Cerevel we aim to unravel the mysteries of the brain to solve some of the most difficult to treat neuroscience diseases, including evaluating novel therapies for schizophrenia, epilepsy, and Parkinson's disease. The Target and Lead Identification Suite with AlphaFold gives us a valuable tool to more efficiently evaluate and improve our discovery efforts," said Claude Barberis, vice president, Medicinal Chemistry at Cerevel. "The deeper understanding and insights we will be able to derive could ultimately get treatments for the most devastating neuroscience diseases onto the market faster, improving the day-to-day lives of millions of people." Multiomics Suite Google Cloud's Multiomics Suite advances precision medicine care by transforming multiomics data into insights to advance scientific discoveries. Organizations can use this solution to streamline and accelerate analysis of genomic data, design clinical genomics, accelerate personalized medicine, and interpret genomic data to unlock new discoveries. The solution also provides structure and processes for researchers and data scientists to collaborate, saving time on developing net new paths, algorithms, or methods. What sets the Multiomics Suite apart is that it is cloud agnostic, allowing organizations to leverage existing investments in multiomics in a simplified environment. It also offers complete traceability through Vertex AI, so customers can organize millions of artifacts in their cloud environments. Finally, it leverages the power of Google Research to transform hundreds of thousands of files, samples, and records to load variant call format (VCF) files from Google Cloud Storage into BigQuery for analysis. "Google Cloud life science customers can benefit from our long experience in this domain. Vertex AI Pipelines and Datasets features are what provide this important, complete traceability for advanced experiments," said Maniar. The Mutiomics Suite includes:
"Combining the science of genetics with the business of discovery, we endeavor to advance the economies of biology and healing through genetics," said Dr. Alexander Titus, vice president of Strategy & Computational Sciences at Colossal Biosciences. "With Google Cloud's Multiomics Suite, Colossal was able to see 52% reduction in overall cost and an 88% reduction in time to execute whole genome sequence analysis when compared with open-source tools—demonstrating dramatic improvements in overall computational efficiency. This accelerates our ability to solve critical problems for all life on Earth." Google Cloud's ecosystem of delivery partners provides expert implementation of services for Target and Lead Identification Suite and Multiomics Suite to help life sciences organizations deploy at scale. These partners include EPAM Systems, Inc., Form Bio, Max Kelsen, Omnigen, Quantiphi, and others. Privacy and security Source: Google Cloud media announcement |