BUSINESS INSIGHTS, PHARMA TECH
prnewswire | April 11, 2023
Cerner Enviza, an Oracle company, along with John Snow Labs, are now helping support the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's drug safety Sentinel Initiative. By developing artificial intelligence (AI) tools aimed at extracting critical information from clinical notes within electronic health records (EHR), Oracle and John Snow will aid the FDA in better understanding the effects of medicines on large populations. Looking at the asthma drug, montelukast, and its possibility of mental health side effects, this two-year project will demonstrate how the use of machine learning and natural language processing (NLP) technology with unstructured data may help fill gaps in knowledge.
Cerner Enviza leverages decades of life sciences expertise spanning commercial, real world, clinical and regulatory research. This includes working with a broad range of Oracle provider networks to help accelerate the discovery, development, and deployment of health insights and therapies. John Snow Labs is known for its AI and NLP in healthcare and is the developer of the Spark NLP library. Together, Cerner Enviza and John Snow Labs will develop a new methodology to enhance computerized queries, or phenotyping, of digital patient data and clinical notes to support pharmacoepidemiology.
Cerner Enviza, who will lead the team, was chosen by the Sentinel Innovation Center, who is headed by Mass General Brigham and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute.
"Development and evaluation of tools that can enhance our ability to utilize unstructured EHR data is a key strategic priority for the Sentinel Innovation Center. We look forward to this new relationship and exciting initiative led by Cerner Enviza," said Rishi Desai, Ph.D., Mass General Brigham executive leadership team member, Sentinel Innovation Center.
Traditional manual methods for analyzing clinician notes often can be a bottleneck for fully understanding the symptoms and outcomes that patients experience at the population level. However, advances in AI offer a scalable and transportable NLP processes.
"This is an incredible opportunity to work with these exceptional leaders to use Oracle's de-identified EHR data to help transform unstructured clinical notes into validated and useable data for physicians and researchers," said Mike Kelly, global head, Cerner Enviza. "Connected technologies and unified data can accelerate innovation and, in turn, help providers realize better recommendations and outcomes for their patients."
"We are thrilled to team with Cerner Enviza to apply NLP in such an important real-world evidence project," said David Talby, CTO, John Snow Labs. "We're honored by the Sentinel Innovation Center's vote of confidence in our joint ability to help investigate this use case. Together, Cerner Enviza and John Snow Labs have all the right expertise, data, and technology to make it happen."
The project known as the Multi-source Observational Safety Study for Advanced Information Classification Using NLP (MOSAIC-NLP) is also supported by the participation of Children's Hospital of Orange County, National Jewish Health, and Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute who will provide clinical expertise and consulting.
About John Snow Labs
John Snow Labs is an AI and NLP company that provides software, models, and data to help healthcare and life science organizations put AI to good use. The company is the developer of Spark NLP and host of the NLP Summit.
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BUSINESS INSIGHTS, PHARMA TECH
Businesswire | March 29, 2023
Simulations Plus, Inc. a leading provider of modeling and simulation software and services for pharmaceutical safety and efficacy, today announced that it established a strategic research collaboration with the Sino-American Cancer Foundation (SACF). This collaboration will leverage Simulations Plus’ staff and Artificial Intelligence-driven Drug Design technology in the ADMET Predictor® software platform to support the discovery and design of novel inhibitors of methylenetetrahydrofolate dehydrogenase 2 (MTHFD2), an emerging cancer target.
Per the terms of the collaboration, Simulations Plus will develop quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) models for efficacy against MTHFD2, using information from SACF as well as academic and patent literature. The biologists, computational and medicinal chemists in the Early Drug Discovery Services team at Simulations Plus will work with the researchers at SACF to define the multi-objective parameters against which the lead molecule(s) will be optimized. The new AIDD Module in ADMET Predictor® will then be employed to generate libraries of virtual compounds that are optimized for potency and other chosen parameters. The teams will select promising candidates for synthesis and testing, and ensuing rounds of QSAR model building and AIDD optimization will be performed until the milestone criteria in the collaboration agreement are achieved.
“We value the trust and confidence SACF has in our team and AI technology to complement and accelerate conventional drug design and lead optimization processes,” said Dr. Jeremy Jones, Principal Scientist at Simulations Plus and project lead. “By combining their drug discovery expertise with our algorithmic and data science know-how, we are confident we will successfully support their hit-to-lead target development activities.”
As part of this agreement, SACF will provide upfront funding to Simulations Plus to design a set number of compounds for efficacy against MTHFD2 which will be exclusive to SACF. Subsequent milestone payments will be made as key research and development goals are met.
“SACF has had an active interest in AI for de novo design for some time, and we have found a trusted partner in Simulations Plus to help us integrate this into our research,” added Dr. Frank Luh, CEO of SACF. “Scientists from the two organizations will work side-by-side to combine SACF’s data with all that Simulations Plus offers to identify the next generation of compounds that could help in the treatment of cancer.”
John DiBella, SLP Division President, said, “The Early Drug Discovery Services offering at Simulations Plus is tailor made for this type of partnership, where our team of experts, including computational, medicinal, and cheminformatics specialists, provide end-to-end AI-driven drug discovery and optimization support to complement the SACF team. Simulations Plus continues to invite future collaborations which benefit organizations and, most importantly, the global communities we serve.”
About Simulations Plus, Inc.
Serving clients worldwide for more than 25 years, Simulations Plus is a leading provider in the biosimulation market providing software and consulting services supporting drug discovery, development, research, and regulatory submissions. We offer solutions that bridge machine learning, physiologically based pharmacokinetics, quantitative systems pharmacology/toxicology, and population PK/PD modeling approaches. Our technology is licensed and applied by major pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and regulatory agencies worldwide.
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BUSINESS INSIGHTS, PHARMACY MARKET
Globenewswire | March 30, 2023
Aquestive Therapeutics, Inc. a pharmaceutical company advancing medicines to solve patients’ problems with current standards of care and provide transformative products to improve their lives, today announced it has expanded its exclusive license and supply agreement with Atnahs Pharma UK Limited (“Pharmanovia”), a global pharmaceutical company that revitalizes, extends and expands the lifecycle of established medicines, for Libervant™ Buccal Film to cover the rest of the world, excluding the United States, Canada, and China. The original licensing agreement with Pharmanovia announced in September 2022 covered the European Union, United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland, and Norway, as well as countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
“We are pleased to announce the expansion of our collaboration with Pharmanovia,” said Daniel Barber, Chief Executive Officer of Aquestive. “We believe Pharmanovia’s experience and geographic footprint align well with our goal of providing patients throughout the world with access to Libervant. This announcement also aligns with our mission to put the patient at the center of everything we do. We will continue to advocate for patient access, patient choice, and patient empowerment on a global basis.”
Pharmanovia CEO, James Burt, commented, “Following a strong start to our collaboration with Aquestive Therapeutics, we’ve expanded our agreement to include many more territories. Our experience with diazepam marketed under an established brand in Valium®, combined with Aquestive Therapeutics’ unique PharmFilm® technology, provides a potentially significant delivery option to caregivers and patients in times of critical need and enables us to optimize an existing medicine to better meet the needs of patients, healthcare professionals and payors.”
Pursuant to the expanded agreement, Aquestive Therapeutics will serve as the exclusive sole manufacturer and supplier for the product and Pharmanovia will be responsible for all regulatory and commercialization activities. Aquestive will receive an undisclosed upfront payment and, if approved for market access, milestone payments, and double-digit royalties on net sales of the diazepam buccal film in the licensed territories.
About Aquestive Therapeutics
Aquestive Therapeutics, Inc. is a pharmaceutical company advancing medicines to solve patients’ problems with current standards of care and provide transformative products to improve their lives. We are developing orally administered products to deliver complex molecules, providing novel alternatives to invasive and inconvenient standard of care therapies. Aquestive has five commercialized products marketed by its licensees in the U.S. and around the world, and is the exclusive manufacturer of these licensed products. The Company also collaborates with pharmaceutical companies to bring new molecules to market using proprietary, best-in-class technologies, like PharmFilm®, and has proven drug development and commercialization capabilities. Aquestive is advancing a late-stage proprietary product pipeline focused on treating diseases of the central nervous system and an earlier stage pipeline for the treatment of severe allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis.
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