Biogerontology Research Foundation CSO to chair Pharma AI track at BioDataWorld West 2017

Wednesday, April 26, 2017, London, UK - The Biogerontology Research Foundation, a registered UK charity today announced that its Chief Science Officer will chair the pharmaceutical artificial intelligence track at the BioDataWorld West in San Francisco and present. In addition, the BGRF scientist will deliver a presentation on the applications of ageing research into the pharmaceutical research & development processes and bridging biomarker development with consumer insights using the latest advances in artificial intelligence.

Dr. Zhavoronkov will also chair a round table on AI in healthcare with Philip Nelson (Director of Engineering at Google), Mark A DepRisto (Head of deep learning for genetics and genomics at Google) and Thomas Clozel (co-founder of OWKIN) and co-chairing a panel discussion in AI and Machine Learning for drug discovery and development with Dan Holder (Exececutive Director of Biostatistics at Merck), Matthew Tudor (Principal Scientist, Chemistry and Informatics, at Merck), Devan Mehrotra (Associate Vice President of Biostatistics at Merck Research Laboratories), Carol Rohl (Executive Director of IT Account Management, Scientific Information Management, at Merck), Jeff Evelhoch (Vice President and Head of Translational Biomarkers at Merck Sharp and Dohme), and Mathai Mammen (Senior Vice President of Cardiovascular Diseases, Metabolic diseases, Immunology and Oncology at Merck).

"The intersection of AI with precision medicine is now emerging to become a big trend within both the AI and pharmaceutical industry, and is something the Biogerontology Research Foundation has focused on for almost a decade now. The fact that major pharmaceutical companies are backing this approach with the inauguration of their new AI and Healthcare track at BioDataWorld West 2017 attests to this fact very strongly" said Dmitry Kaminskiy, Managing Trustee of the Biogerontology Research Foundation.

BioDataWorld West is a conference focused on the intersection of big data and precision medicine, and this year marks the introduction of a new AI track organized in partnership with Merck, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. The conference will feature executives and department heads from many outstanding institutions including the FDA, NIH, Google, Merck, and SENS Research Foundation, as well as researchers and professors from Stanford University, UCSF, Ohio State University and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

"The application of AI in general and deep learning in particular to biomarker and drug discovery and development holds great promise, especially as it pertains to the characterization and treatment of ageing. The Biogerontology Research Foundation is delighted to be a part of this landmark conference with an entirely new roundtable, panel discussion and presentation track on the topic of the intersection of ageing and AI and the convergence of big data and personalized medicine, areas that we consider to hold great promise in expediting the speed of drug and biomarker discovery and development, reducing the multidimensionality of complex biological datasets for the purposes of candidate drug and biomarker screening and selection, and ultimately the effective characterization and treatment of ageing and age-related ill-health" said Franco Cortese, Deputy Director & Trustee of the Biogerontology Research Foundation.

In 2016 the BGRF scientists published several seminal proof of concept papers demonstrating the applications of deep learning to drug discovery, biomarker development, and aging research. A study published in Aging proposed a short list of molecules with likely geroprotective effects. In a recently published article in Nature Communications, the BGRF describes a tool that it uses to study the changes in gene expression between young and old tissues and tissues affected by the disease. Another paper demonstrating the ability to predict the chronological age of the patient using a simple blood test, published in Aging, became the second most popular paper in the journal's history.

The BGRF is also actively supporting the development of the databases of small molecules implicated in aging and longevity for example the DrugAge published in Aging Cell and Geroprotectors.org, published in Aging.

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The full list of speakers for the conference can be found here: http://www.terrapinn.com/conference/biodata-west/speakers.stm, and the full agenda for the conference can be found here: http://www.terrapinn.com/conference/biodata-west/agenda.stm

The detailed conference program is available at https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MSkHgw-pq4wJ0EOAJnVUq9FvKOQiW98OnZTGBfCzIqw/edit