Chai-2: The AI Model Accelerating Drug Discovery with Chai Discovery Co-Founders Jack Dent and Joshua Meier
AI has already fueled breakthroughs in biotechnology—but now, further advances in AI are poised to fuel pharmaceutical discoveries as well. Sarah Guo sits down with Joshua Meier and Jack Dent, co-founders of Chai Discovery, whose newly launched Chai-2 designs bespoke antibodies that bind to their targets at a jaw-dropping 20% rate. Jack and Joshua talk about the implications for Chai-2’s success rate at discovering antibodies for the pharmaceutical industry, how structure prediction is pivotal in making the model work, and future potential for using the model to optimize other molecular properties. Plus, they talk about what they believe bioscientists should be learning to best utilize Chai-2’s technology.
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Chapters:
00:00 – Joshua Meier and Jack Dent Introduction
01:09 – Genesis of Chai Discovery
06:12 – Chai-2 Model
10:13 – Criteria for Specifying Targets for Chai-2
13:12 – How the Chai-2 Model Works
16:12 – Emergent Vocabulary from Chai-2
18:15 – Hopes for Chai-2’s Impact
20:33 – Reception of the Chai-2 Model
22:16 – Future of Wet Lab Screening and Biotech
27:08 – Optimizing Other Molecule Properties
31:37 – Where Chai Invests From Here
36:20 – What Bioscientists Should Learn for Chai-2
40:23 – How Jack and Josh Oriented to the Biotech Space
43:38 – Platform Investment and Chai-2
46:53 – Scaling Chai Discovery
48:21 – Hiring at Chai Discovery
49:09 – Conclusion
Learning the language of life
AI is discovering new drugs. Sound like science fiction? Not at Absci! Sean and Joshua join us to discuss their AI-driven pipeline for drug discovery. We discuss the tech along with how it might change how we think about healthcare at the most fundamental level.
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Featuring:
Sean McClain – LinkedIn, X
Joshua Meier – GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Show Notes:
View Absci’s AI Lead Scientist Joshua Meier’s presentation at NVIDIA GTC 2022
Learn more about Absci’s machine learning breakthroughs presented at GTC
Learn more about Absci AI Research (AAIR) Lab
View career opportunities at Absci
Absci AI drug discovery technology
Watch the Truist AI Symposium Podcast to get help demystifying the use of AI in drug discovery
Absci website
Upcoming Events:
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Sean & Greg — Biology and ML for Drug Discovery
Sean McClain is the founder and CEO, and Gregory Hannum is the VP of AI Research at Absci, a biotech company that's using deep learning to expedite drug discovery and development.
Lukas, Sean, and Greg talk about why Absci started investing so heavily in ML research (it all comes back to the data), what it'll take to build the GPT-3 of DNA, and where the future of pharma is headed. Sean and Greg also share some of the challenges of building cross-functional teams and combining two highly specialized fields like biology and ML.
The complete show notes (transcript and links) can be found here: http://wandb.me/gd-sean-and-greg
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Connect with Sean and Greg:
📍 Sean's Twitter: https://twitter.com/seanrmcclain
📍 Greg's Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregory_hannum
📍 Absci's Twitter: https://twitter.com/abscibio
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Timestamps:
0:00 Intro
0:53 How Absci merges biology and AI
11:24 Why Absci started investing in ML
19:00 Creating the GPT-3 of DNA
25:34 Investing in data collection and in ML teams
33:14 Clinical trials and Absci's revenue structure
38:17 Combining knowledge from different domains
45:22 The potential of multitask learning
50:43 Why biological data is tricky to work with
55:00 Outro
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