ALS drug discovered by AI enters into clinical trials

Science
#1

Not directly related to PFS, but it’s interesting to see how machine learning is beginning to create breakthroughs in biotech.

A biotech backed by Merck, Eli Lilly and private equity group BlackRock says it has begun one of the first clinical trials in humans of a drug discovered using artificial intelligence to analyse a vast database of brain tissue.

Verge Genomics, which was founded by Alice Zhang, a 33-year-old former neuroscience doctoral student at University of California, told the Financial Times that it has dosed its first patient with a novel therapy named VRG50635 to target ALS, a neurodegenerative disease for which there is no known cure.

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#2

The irony that some of these breakthroughs are being funded by Merck, the company who invented finasteride and has behaved abysmally in defending its safety at the expense of our once happy, healthy lives. It is not lost on me.

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#3

ALS may be one of the few conditions worse than PFS. Good to see continued progress.