Biostate AI, a Palo Alto and Houston-based startup, is using artificial intelligence to speed up the drug discovery process. The company has developed a data-sharing platform called Omics Web to help researchers predict the health impacts of drugs based on DNA, RNA, and protein biomarkers. CEO David Zhang compares Omics Web to a “Library of Alexandria” for biological data.
The platform encourages researchers, professors, and graduate students to share their data and work together on new projects. CTO Ashwin Gopinath says one of their goals is to make research more accessible by lowering the cost of RNA sequencing to $40. This lets researchers do more experiments at a lower cost and increases the chances of making important discoveries.
Biostate AI speeds drug discovery
Some researchers are skeptical about the feasibility of adding another data-sharing platform to an already crowded market. However, Gill Bejerano, a professor of pediatrics and computer science, said Omics Web’s cost-effectiveness and data curation capabilities could potentially make it a valuable resource.
The platform’s ability to bring together large amounts of data can open up new possibilities for researchers by allowing them to explore creative research questions. “As a researcher, you try to read as many menus as you can because they allow you to imagine which questions you could be asking,” Bejerano said. Biostate AI hopes to use insights from Omics Web to help pharmaceutical companies identify and eliminate unsafe drugs early in the development process.
This could save billions of dollars and get safe drugs to patients faster. “If we have better healthcare and provide the right drugs to the right people at the right time, we can improve overall longevity and health,” Zhang said.
