As Sanofi’s high enterprise partnering government, Alban de La Sablière led the pharmaceutical large’s collaboration talks with quite a few firms, together with $30 billion in acquisitions previously six years. Now he’s transferring to the opposite finish of the negotiating desk. De La Sablière has taken a brand new place at synthetic intelligence biotech Owkin, which occurs to be one of many companions he helped to safe for Sanofi in his earlier function.
Because the chief enterprise officer at Owkin, de La Sablière will look to seek out extra huge pharma alliances together with his new employer. The transfer comes at a time of transition for Owkin, which operates twin headquarters in Paris and New York. The corporate is increasing past its preliminary work of utilizing its AI tech to assist bigger firms uncover and develop new medicine. Its technique now consists of creating its personal pipeline of recent merchandise.
“I’m actually keen about how AI can affect the way forward for drug discovery and drug improvement,” de La Sablière mentioned. “It was too good [a job] to move. Individuals driving this revolution are usually in scaleup or startup [companies].”
Owkin, which was based in 2016, takes a “federated studying” method to knowledge evaluation. The corporate companions with establishments and organizations, which offer entry to their knowledge. The information stay on the establishments however the firm deploys its machine-learning algorithms to these websites to study illness. After they’ve completed studying from one website, they will return to a central location or be redeployed to a different website to study extra. This method permits researchers to collaborate with out having to deliver the entire knowledge collectively in a single place.
The earliest Owkin companions had been most cancers therapy facilities and hospitals. The corporate finally expanded its partnership scope to drugmakers. Below the Sanofi partnership introduced almost a 12 months in the past, the pharma large dedicated $180 million to the alliance, which is targeted on discovering most cancers biomarkers that may very well be potential targets for brand spanking new most cancers medicine. Since then, Owkin has signed on ADC Therapeutics in a cancer-focused deal that goals to determine biomarkers which might be predictive of affected person outcomes from most cancers therapy.
De La Sablière was not in a position to focus on private details about the partnerships, however talking typically, he mentioned the flexibility to work with distinctive datasets and determine new biomarkers is making a distinction. The method is decreasing drug discovery time and permitting many experiments to be finished in parallel.
“You’ll be able to transfer a lot quicker since you’re far more focused,” he mentioned. “The optimization from goal to a lead candidate is way faster.”
Owkin’s give attention to most cancers is a mirrored image of the corporate’s co-founders, de La Sablière mentioned. CEO Thomas Clozel introduced his expertise and perspective as an oncologist and professor. The background of Chief Science Officer Gilles Wainrib is in AI and machine studying. Whereas Owkin’s enterprise improvement work has been oriented round utilizing the corporate’s AI platform to assist companions advance their drug analysis, de La Sablière mentioned the imaginative and prescient from the start was to evolve past a fee-for-service enterprise mannequin.
A part of de La Sablière’s new function will embrace discovering new drug property that Owkin can develop. These property may come to Owkin through acquisitions, licensing offers, or strategic partnerships with drug firms, mentioned de La Sablière, who led Morgan Stanley’s M&A follow in France previous to becoming a member of Sanofi in 2016. The corporate’s inner R&D work has already yielded new diagnostics. Final month, the European Union authorized two of Owkin’s AI-based most cancers diagnostics, one for breast most cancers and the opposite for colorectal most cancers.
Owkin goals to develop past most cancers. The corporate has already begun trying to different therapeutic areas through its partnerships. A multi-year collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb introduced earlier this 12 months is utilizing AI to give you extra exact and environment friendly medical trials designs. Heart problems is the preliminary focus however the companions may develop to different indications sooner or later. De La Sablière mentioned that for Owkin’s inner drug analysis, immunology represents one other space of potential enlargement.
Owkin’s final financing was final 12 months, a Collection B spherical that valued the corporate at greater than €1 billion and vaulted it into “unicorn” territory. The valuation displays the maturation of Owkin’s expertise in addition to the corporate’s progress. With greater than 200 workers, de La Sablière mentioned Owkin is not a startup.
“It’s not a big firm, but it surely’s not a small firm anymore,” he mentioned.
Picture by Owkin