In a world where conventional drug discovery methods frequently fall short, today's guest addresses the critical challenge of fighting human diseases by drawing inspiration from nature’s most resilient creatures. Could the secret to overcoming our most stubborn illnesses lie in the extraordinary adaptability of extreme mammals? Veterinarian-scientist Ashley Zehnder, the Co-founder and CEO of AI-driven drug discovery company Fauna Bio, believes so.

By leveraging data from 100 million years of evolved disease resistance in mammals, Ashley sees a unique opportunity at the crossroads of genomics and emerging model species to improve health for all species, including humans. In this episode, she explores how harnessing the biological secrets of these animals using AI and machine learning could revolutionize medicine, leading to breakthroughs that benefit us all. Tune in to discover how Fauna Bio is pioneering a new frontier in drug discovery and how understanding the resilience of these creatures could reshape the future of healthcare!

Key Points:

• Insight into the diverse backgrounds of Fauna Bio’s founding members.
• Ways that Fauna Bio uses AI and genomics to identify key targets for new therapeutics.
• The role machine learning plays in analyzing and annotating large volumes of data.
• Gene expression and other data inputs that drive Fauna Bio’s discoveries.
• The collaborative effort required to collate datasets from 400+ mammals.
• Challenges of working with genomic data and training ML models on it.
• How Fauna Bio rigorously validates their AI-driven discoveries.
• Cooperation between ML developers and domain experts to advance this technology.
• Technological advancements that enable Fauna Bio’s innovations.
• Ashely’s advice on differentiation for leaders of AI-powered startups.
• Where she sees Fauna Bio making the biggest impact in the future.

Quotes:

“[Fauna Bio uses] AI and genomics as a way to identify the most impactful targets for new therapeutic programs across a broad number of diseases.” — Ashley Zehnder

“It’s certainly easier than it has been in the past to generate very high-quality single-cell RNA sequencing. We’re doing a lot of that. The challenges on the technical side are getting much easier. The challenges on the interpretation side are still there.” — Ashley Zehnder

“There are many points along the drug discovery path where AI companies can differentiate. But that story has to be clear because, otherwise, it's very hard to get out of the signal-to-noise that is the AI discovery landscape in biopharma” — Ashley Zehnder

Links:

Fauna Bio

Ashley Zehnder on LinkedIn

Ashley Zehnder on X

Ashley Zehnder Email

Zoonomia Project

Science Issue dedicated to the Zoonomia Project

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