Life Sci AI: The Podcast

Following the successful conclusion of another JP Morgan Conference in 2023, Nick sat down with Dr Juana Candia to hear about her take on this year's conference and what we should take from it.

Juana brings more than 20 years of leadership experience in Biotech, Precision Medicine, and Cell & Gene Therapy. She is the co-founder of one of the first Biotech startups in South America, pursued scientific discoveries and built businesses in seven countries and four continents. Accelerated innovation pipelines, authored 20+ patents families, designed, and delivered growth strategies resulting in business turnarounds and double-digit growths while working for Roche, DSM, Novartis, GSK, and Scailyte (Start-up). Currently serving on Boards of Directors and Advisers to emerging companies with transformative technologies and disruptive business models.

In the second episode of the series focusing on the use of AI in drug discovery, Nick is joined by Quentin Perron; CSO of Iktos. Iktos are a French biotech for ligand-based and structure-based de novo drug design focusing on multi-parametric optimization.

Quentin Perron is a medicinal chemist by training. He holds a PhD in organometallic chemistry from the University of Geneva. During his post-doc fellowship at UCLA, he worked on the total synthesis of Brasillicardin A, a complex natural molecule known for having potent immunosuppressive activity. After working as a medicinal chemist in CNS indications at Laboratoires Servier, he switched to data science and chemoinformatics at Quinten, a company specialising in data science services. In 2016, with his business partners Yann Gaston-Mathé and Nicolas Do Huu, he co-founded Iktos, a start-up company developing AI technologies for new drug design. He is now the CSO of the company.

A special series of Life Sci AI: The Podcast Series looking at AI in Drug Discovery begins with a fascinating episode featuring Dr David Wright, CTO and Co-Founder of Kuano. The discussion delved deep into the revolutionary role Kauno is playing in the Drug Discovery process.

In this episode, Nick and Dr Bouarfa discuss her journey to becoming a CEO, the uniqueness of OKRA.ai and most interestingly the future of female leaders in a STEM subject, particularly within Life Sciences.

For the second episode of series 3, Nick discussed with Sebastian Durandeu from Feebris the transition into MedTech, what to expect when it comes to documentation, and working with ML on the edge. 

Sebastian is the Head of Software Engineering at Feebris where he leads the software team building the next generation of remote patient monitoring tools using machine learning. He is a software engineer with 10+ years of experience and in the past he has helped numerous companies build applications and services for the Cloud and adopt emerging technologies.

For those who are thinking about making the leap to MedTech, this is a really interesting episode to listen to.

We are back for series 3 of Life Sci AI: The Podcast. In the first series, we were honoured to be joined by Dr Tim Guilliams, the CEO and Co-Founder of Healx. Healx have created a suite of AI products and platforms to revolutionise the drug discovery process of rare diseases. It is a truly exciting time for Healx as their first process has reached clinical trials!

Tim is a tech entrepreneur from the Cambridge Cluster, passionate about using AI to accelerate treatments for rare diseases. The mission-driven technology company, Healx are pioneering the next wave of drug discovery in order to bring novel, effective treatments to rare disease patients around the world.

In this episode, Nick Mahoney speaks with Dr Mickael Tardy, the CSO from Hera-Mi. This episode is not one to be missed if you are looking to learn about taking risks and the opportunities available in Europe for international learning in software development and especially in medical imaging.

Mickael Tardy is a CSO of Hera-MI, a medical imaging software company in Nantes (France), building AI-based solutions for healthcare, focusing primarily on breast cancer. 

Mickael studied in Russia and France for his double degree in engineering before starting as a software engineer in medical imaging. After seven years in the field and looking for a new challenge, Mickael joined Hera-MI in its early days and started a PhD in Deep Learning while building the company at the same time. Today, after defending his PhD, Mickael takes care of all the research activities at Hera-MI, aiming for production-ready solutions.

In this episode, Nick speaks with Lucy Jung, Co-Founder of Charco Neurotech. Charco has created an incredible device that reduces the symptoms of Parkinson’s for patients and helps them live as close to normal lives as possible. Lucy’s passion for bettering the lives of those with Parkison’s is truly infectious, and hopefully, you will all be inspired by this episode.

Lucy Jung co-founded Charco Neurotech after meeting members of the Parkinson's community whose symptoms prevented them from smiling. From then it has been Charco's goal to bring back smiles for people with long-term conditions. With a background in product design, Lucy conceived the CUE1 while studying the Innovation Design Engineering Master's at Imperial College and the Royal College of Art. With the support of some incredible institutions, advisors, and people with Parkinson's, this went on to become Charco Neurotech.

In this great episode, Nick speaks with Eva van Rikxoot, CEO of Thirona, and found out about not only the amazing work they do in medical image analysis but also the fantastic approach to hiring they have had from their foundation. This has led them to be a microcosm of the global community for which they serve!

Eva van Rikxoort is the founder and CEO of Thirona, an internationally fast-growing company in Nijmegen (The Netherlands), specializing in the field of AI-powered medical image analysis. 

Eva obtained her Ph.D. on Segmentation of Anatomical Structures in Chest CT Scans from the University Medical Center Utrecht, followed by a two-year postdoc position in quantitative image analysis at the University of California-Los Angeles.  

Since its inception in 2014, Thirona has established itself as a highly innovative partner for early drug and treatment development through clinical implementation, ultimately aiming at supporting clinical specialists in accurate diagnosis and personalized patient care.

In this episode, Nick discusses the incredibly cutting edge world of neural interfaces and the work BIOS is doing to create Neural Digital Therapeutics to help in the treatment of cardiovascular diseases. This incredible episode shows what it takes to be a the forefront of AI research within Life Sciences... This is one not to be missed.

Oliver was driven from an early age by a vision that technology could and should repair and support the human body. Oliver studied for his PhD on tissue and materials integration at the Nanoscience Centre, University of Cambridge. He wanted to understand how a device could be implanted inside the human body without harming it. He later moved to Canada to continue his research at McGill University, before founding BIOS in 2015 alongside co-founder Emil Hewage. The two shared a bold vision for reading and writing the nervous system. Oliver was named in Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in 2018.

In this special episode, Nick speaks with both Mark Lynch and Andrii Kulakovskyi to discuss the new BioIT department at Genomic Vision and how they are using AI and Image Processing to aid drug discovery!

Andrii established the BioIT department (branch of R&D organisation) working on the development of tools for automated fluorescence image processing and analysis in order to deliver new products to help their customers in different sectors of the healthcare market in which Genomic Vision technology is being utilized. Mark joined Genomic Vision in March 2021 to define the product strategy and market segments to drive new growth in the company's molecular combing technology and to contribute to Genomic Vision’s strategy to develop and commercialise new applications by molecular combing.

In this first episode to kick off series 2, Nick speaks with Dr Lucien Blondel all about his journey and passion for surgical robotic development!

Dr Lucien Blondel is the CTO and Co-founder of Quantum Surgical SAS, an innovative medical robotics company commercializing the Epione® robot intended to assist physicians during percutaneous ablations in the abdomen. Lucien BLONDEL has 20+ years of experience in medical robotics and medical imaging in both startup and corporate environments.

In episode 9, Nick Mahoney, has an in-depth discussion with Dr Vaclav Potesil, Founder of Optellum.

Optellum have recently achieved FDA approval and the world’s first AI-powered Clinical Decision Support Software for Early Lung Cancer Diagnosis. What stands out in this episode is the incredible inception story of Optellum and when/where Dr @Vaclav Potesil chose that the time was right to start this incredible journey.

In episode 8, Nick Mahoney, has an in-depth discussion with Renan Sales Barros, CTO of NICO.LAB.

NICO.LAB are revolutionary company based in Amsterdam who have recently secured €13m in Series A funding. They have created a cloud-based AI driven stroke diagnostic tool, which is being utilised across the Netherlands. In this episode Nick speaks to Renan about his incredible journey… considering his first ever job was their CTO!

In episode 7, Nick Mahoney, has an in-depth discussion with Jeroen van Duffelen, CBO of Aidence

Jeroen van Duffelen is the CBO of Aidence – a start-up based in Amsterdam who is seeking to harness Deep Learning for Lung Cancer diagnostics through their product: Veye Lung Nodules

In episode 6, Nick Mahoney, discusses the incredible work of Blackford with CEO & Founder, Ben Panter. 

The company’s Blackford Platform streamlines the procurement, deployment, use and support of a curated marketplace of clinical application and AI products. The Blackford Curated Marketplace contains over 40 clinical applications, all regulatory cleared and validated in clinical environments. The Blackford Platform manages interactions with the entire radiology clinical workflow through a single integration point. The company’s products are in use in over 700 hospitals, radiology groups and imaging centres worldwide.

In episode 5, Nick Mahoney, discusses the incredible work of Cerebriu with Dr Akshay Pai. Cerebriu is using Deep Learning to automate decision making MRI scans to enable an increase in data efficiency giving to Radiologists.

Dr Akshay Pai, PhD, originally from India, currently based in Copenhagen, and a Co-founder & CTO at Cerebriu has more than a decade of experience in machine learning in medical imaging and key inventor across several patents.

In this episode, Dr Jonathan O’Keefe, CEO of Machine Medicine joins Nick to discuss Machine Medicine’s innovative medical device in neuromodulation. In the episode, Dr O’Keefe outlines his transition from the NHS to startup CEO and along with Nick, they tackle the ethical limits of Neuromodulation.

Dr O’Keeffe first studied philosophy where he became interested in the interface between artificial and natural intelligence. Subsequently, he trained as a medical doctor and practised for several years while undertaking an MSc in machine learning at UCL and completing a PhD in computational neuroscience at Cambridge. He then retired from clinical practice to start Machine Medicine, a company utilising computer vision to measure physical impairment or disability. Machine Medicine currently focuses on Parkinson’s disease and is being deployed in numerous clinical trials, both commercial and non-commercial.

In this episode Dr Rob Hague joins Nick, to discuss the growth of Cydar in developing a product that utilizes computer vision and cloud computing for surgical guidance. Key in this episode is Rob’s explanation of rendering and visualization techniques they use and the challenges they first faced when they had to use standards from 1997.

Rob Hague is the CTO of Cydar Medical, a UK startup using computer vision and cloud computing to provide advanced surgical guidance. He’s worked in both research and product development, ranging from user interfaces and ubiquitous computing to low- level application infrastructure and algorithm implementation.

We were really lucky to be joined by Dr. Marc Goldfinger from Perspectum in Episode 2 of Life Sci AI: The Podcast series. During the episode, Marc expertly outlines the products he has been involved in and the steps Perspectum are taking to understand what happens to our internal organs post Covid-19.

In Episode 1 of Life Sci AI: The Podcast series, Dr. Olivier Joly the CSO of Brainomix joins Nick Mahoney to discuss the use of AI for neuroimaging. Dr. Joly is heading up an innovative team at Brainomix who have an AI-based e-stroke solution. Together they explore the advantages of the Brainomix product and where the application of AI for neuroimaging can end up in the future!

Dr. Joly has dual training and holds a master's degree (M.S) in computer sciences from Bordeaux (ENSEIRB), France and a Ph.D. in neuroscience, neurophysiology and neuroimaging from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KUL) medical school (Leuven, Belgium).  He has worked as an academic neuroscientist (in Belgium, France, and in the United Kingdom) for about 10 years. Since 2015, Dr. Joly has led the scientific research at Brainomix Ltd. His team is behind the algorithms of the AI-based e-Stroke solution that processes monthly more than 10k head scans of acute stroke patients worldwide.