AION Labs, Powered by BioMed X, Launches Second Global Call for Application: Artificial Intelligence for Clinical Trial Readiness of Drug Candidates
- AION Labs, Israel-based alliance of AstraZeneca, Merck, Pfizer, Teva, Israel Biotech Fund and Amazon Web Services (AWS), to start second global crowdsourcing initiative based on the innovation model of Germany’s BioMed X Institute
- Call for application seeks to identify global research talent for new startup company in field of: Smart AI to Advance Clinical Trial Readiness of Drug Candidates
REHOVOT, Israel and HEIDELBERG, Germany, December 13, 2021. AION Labs, a first-of-its-kind innovation lab spearheading the adoption of AI technologies and computational science to solve therapeutic challenges, and German independent research institute BioMed X, announced today the launch of the second global call for application to identify biomedical scientists and inventors to form a new startup at AION Labs’ headquarters in Rehovot, Israel.
The chosen AION Labs startup team will be sponsored by several industry-leading partners and supported by the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA). The sponsors of this call for application are AstraZeneca, Merck, and Pfizer, with close support from Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Most drug candidates fail in clinical trials because of unexpected safety issues or lack of efficacy in human subjects. Omics technologies have improved dramatically in recent years allowing for extensive tissue and single cell profiling over time. These technologies are routinely applied in large scale preclinical in-vitro and in-vivo studies. However, these multi-omics datasets are heterogenous, not integrated and unreliable in predicting human biology. There is currently no automated solution that employs all preclinical data in a way that allows a reliable assessment of the clinical trial readiness of a drug candidate.
AION Labs is inviting computational biologists and biomedical scientists at academic and industry research labs worldwide to propose the development of a versatile next-generation computational platform that can identify hidden safety liability and lack of efficacy and suggest focused human in vitro perturbation assays to close identified gaps in the drug candidate pre-clinical data package. The AION Labs pharma partners involved in this project will provide a wealth of data for model training and their expertise in setting specifications and evaluating the outcome. Original ideas that go far beyond the current state-of-the-art are being encouraged.
“AION Labs is proud and excited to be launching our second call for application,” said Yair Benita, CTO of AION Labs. “We look forward to providing the chosen startup with our strong resources and mentorship as we work together to develop a cutting-edge solution to significantly improve the probability of success of drug candidates in clinical trials.”
As part of the online application procedure, interested candidates are requested to submit a competitive project proposal. After a preliminary short-listing round, candidates will be invited to a five-day innovation boot camp in Rehovot. With the support of experienced mentors from the pharma, tech and VC industries, the winning team of scientists will be trained and guided during a fully-funded incubation period of up to four years towards
becoming an independent startup.
Further details about this call for application can be found on the AION Labs website. Interested candidates are invited to apply via the BioMed X Career Space before February 13, 2022.
About AION Labs
AION Labs is a first-of-its-kind alliance of AstraZeneca, Merck, Pfizer, Teva, the Israel Biotech Fund and Amazon Web Services (AWS) that have come together with one clear mission: to create and adopt groundbreaking new AI technologies that will transform the process of drug discovery and development in order to contribute to the health and well-being of all people world-wide.
AION Labs is a unique venture hub where brilliant innovators and scientist-founders convene from around the world to solve the biggest R&D challenges guided by years of accumulated know-how, data and experience in pharma. The lab leverages its partners’ wealth of knowledge and a new multidisciplinary mindset with the ingenuity, agility and innovative power of Israel’s start-up ecosystem, to develop strong companies with clear long-term strategies, that will pave the way to the future of healthcare. AION Labs cultivates innovation from within; its unique venture creation process bridges the gap between outstanding academic research in the field of AI and the biggest R&D needs in the discovery and development of new medicines for the benefit of patients.