AI Trailblazers: PharmaVoice Spotlights Pharma Leaders in Tech
PharmaVoice has released its highly anticipated 2024 PharmaVoice 100, spotlighting the industry’s most influential leaders driving change in the rapidly evolving pharmaceutical sector.
According to PharmaVoice, this list is a celebration of the industry’s ongoing revolutions, recognizing leaders who not only navigate change but also forge new paths for others to follow.
“These honorees are inspirations. Their teams look to them for guidance, their patients for support, and their organizations for direction,” said Meagan Parrish, lead editor of PharmaVoice, in a statement.
“Each winner represents progress toward a healthier future for everyone that is bolstered by science and technological advancements. We are excited to recognize their contributions through this annual list.”
FMAI has compiled a key list of the 2024 PharmaVoice 100 winners who are shaping the future of AI and technology.
David Benshoof Klein – Click Therapeutics
David Benshoof Kelin is the CEO and founder of Click Therapeutics, a company that develops AI-enabled, software-based medical treatments.
With over 20 years in the life sciences industry, Klein champions rigorous development and high-quality evidence standards for prescription digital therapeutics.
His mission is to enhance treatment safety and efficacy by integrating software and drugs, believing that collaboration between tech and pharma will improve global access to high-quality treatment.
“I am honored to be recognized alongside other esteemed life science leaders,” he told PharmaVoice.
“This recognition is a testament to the incredible team of innovators at Click Therapeutics, and it affirms the opportunity for digital therapeutics to bridge gaps in care and improve patient outcomes.”
Click offers clinically validated, FDA-regulated treatments accessible via smartphones. Its flagship innovation, Rejoyn, is the first FDA-authorized prescription digital therapeutic designed to treat symptoms of major depressive disorder.
The company continues to expand its platform, utilizing AI and machine learning to address various medical needs in fields such as psychiatry, neurology, oncology, immunology, and cardiometabolic diseases.
Martine van Vugt – Genmab
Martine van Vugt is the Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Vice President of Genmab, a biotechnology company that has recently made significant progress in integrating AI into its operations.
In a statement via LinkedIn, Van Vugt said she was “incredibly honored” to be selected for the PharmaVoice 100 list.
“I’ve always been driven by a deep sense of purpose—to make a difference. Being part of Genmab’s journey as we’ve grown into a biotech innovation leader has been a privilege. Our work towards advancing innovative antibody medicines with a goal to impact patients’ lives is what inspires me every day,” she added.
The biotech company, which is pioneering next-generation antibody therapies for cancer and other serious diseases, recently launched “AI Everywhere,” providing access to ChatGPT for almost all its employees.
Moreover, Genmab is transforming the creation of clinical trial documents using the advanced language model, which integrates clinical data and feedback to improve drafts continuously.
The biotech has also developed AI Translator GPT, a sophisticated tool that translates complex scientific documents with human-like accuracy, reducing translation times from weeks to hours.
Chris Bouton – Certara
Chris Bouton is senior vice president, head, of artificial intelligence at Certara – a model-informed drug development company.
Bouton spearheaded the development of the Certara.AI platform, leveraging generative AI to enhance drug discovery, clinical research, trial execution, and medical writing.
Recognizing the true potential of AI beyond the buzz, Bouton is committed to long-term advancements in this field.
“We are moving from the early phase of excitement around AI technologies in the life sciences space to the phase where we start to figure out how to actually apply these technologies to generate value and efficiencies,” he remarked in an interview with PharmaVoice.
“I’m excited and focused on the identification of applications of AI technologies that will help get life-saving medications to patients faster.”
Certara recently acquired Chemaxon, a company specializing in scientific informatics software, which is projected to generate over $20 million in software revenue in 2024.
For Bouton, biosimulation represents an exciting frontier in AI, with Certara pioneering innovative methods that empower scientists to advance model-informed drug discovery from generation to validation.
“Now is the time to apply AI technologies to challenging and valuable use cases in the life sciences industry to deliver revolutionary therapeutics for humanity,” he added.
Nikolaus Krall – Exscientia
Nikolaus Krall, executive vice president of precision medicine at Exscientia, is an advocate for AI-driven drug development.
In an industry characterized by numerous project failures, Krall emphasized that a “naive and infectious enthusiasm for innovation” is essential.
Exscientia, a pharma tech company using patient-first AI for drug discovery, utilizes robotics and AI to automate entire end-to-end drug discovery workflows.
The company recently opened a 26,000 square feet robotic lab in Oxfordshire, UK. Over the past five years, Exscientia has used AI to design four drug molecules, each representing therapeutic advancements with minimal human input.
“The industry change exciting me the most right now is the convergence of tech (automation, AI, data science), chemistry and biomedical sciences. This opens tantalizing opportunities to augment human drug hunting skills and deliver better drugs faster and with higher chances of success to patients with high unmet medical need,” Krall explained during his conversation with PharmaVoice.”
“In spite of all the innovation of recent years, the industry as a whole still has a productivity and attrition problem. Making new drugs still takes too long, is too expensive and fails more often than not.”
“Whether it is the low patient relevance of preclinical models, high phase 2 attrition rates or the amount of tedious manual labor that can go into R&D. I’d like to continue using cutting-edge technology to address the biggest bottlenecks in our industry head-on and make a difference for patients.”
Niven Narain – BPGbio
Niven Narain, CEO, president, and chairman of BPGbio, developed the NAi Interrogative Biology Platform, powered by the world’s fastest supercomputer.
The programme harnesses AI for drug target discovery and design, developed through collaborations with organizations like the Department of Defense, Harvard Medical School and Sanofi.
It has successfully identified over 100 drug and diagnostic candidates for BPGbio, across various fields, including oncology, metabolic disorders, rare diseases, and central nervous system conditions.
The company currently has three assets in clinical trials, with its lead candidate undergoing phase 2b clinical trials for two types of cancer: glioblastoma multiforme and pancreatic cancer.
BPGbio recently partnered with the University of Oxford’s Centre for Medicines Discovery for a five-year collaboration focused on E2-based protein degradation research in oncology and CNS diseases.
Narain’s expertise in AI extends beyond his role at BPGbio; he also serves on the NASA GeneLab Steering Committee and advises Department of Defense leadership on breast and prostate cancer research.
“[My role in the industry’s next phase is to] demonstrate the power of mathematics and biology intersecting to create better medicines for patients,” he told PharmaVoice.
Eric Walk – PathAI
Eric Walk is chief medical officer at PathAI, a company providing AI-powered research tools and services for pathology.
Under Walk’s leadership, PathAI introduced its MET platform in September, designed to identify non-small cell lung cancer tumors using AI technology.
In addition, the company has provided support for clinical studies related to neoadjuvant oncology, as well as breast cancer, NASH and IBD.
Walk transitioned to PathAI after a successful 13-year tenure at Roche, where he played a crucial role in advancing the company’s initiatives.
At PathAI, he fostered a collaboration with Roche Tissue Diagnostics to create innovative AI-driven digital pathology algorithms for companion diagnostics, enhancing the precision of disease detection and treatment.
“What I’m most excited about is the convergence of precision medicine with AI because I think this combination is going to be transformational for healthcare across multiple disease areas and will deliver novel and meaningful benefits to patients,” he said in a statement to PharmaVoice.
“Over the last 20 years, the precision medicine model of ‘the right drug for the right patient’ has become the standard both in drug development and in clinical medicine. AI technology is supercharging this concept.”