Biology

Photo, light.

Bio, our bodies and physiology.

Modulation, changing.

So how are we using light to change our bodies? And there are different characteristics of light and there are different parts of your body that respond to these different characteristics of light.

where we actually need to understand a little bit more about what is it that we don't know and looking for ways to find out those insights.

So I think it would be helpful if you could walk us through an example of blind and help us understand from a life science tools perspective what that could look like.

I think every company has buyers who know things that nobody inside has ever heard of.

The product page reads like it was written for the board rather than the scientist, that the shiny new launch answers a question that people were asking two years ago but no longer do.

So that's really where I think we need to really pay attention more so now than ever about what people are saying about us and our brands.

So that brings me back to the 94%.

If the ranking happens before anyone talks to us, Whose voice is really shaping that impression, especially in the life sciences when social listening isn't really part of our repertory yet?

A lot of the perception of brands comes from the historical usage of tools within the business or the laboratory.

The thing that defines life is its dynamics.

I could rant for six hours about why I think biology is really on the wrong foot.

The problem is that Biology is the victim of its own successes of the 20th century.

Those successes were biochemistry, knowing how in a test tube to figure out which proteins interact with other proteins.

Then structural biology, so things like electron microscopy that says, well, a mitochondrion looks like this or whatever.

It is Tuesday, October 27th, and you're watching the Biotech Voyager.

It's the show that covers what's next in biotech, ranking and mapping the early stage signals before they are big news.

Thank you for joining us today, especially on a day like today where it's in the aftermath of ESMO over in Spain and all of the drama and all the big signals that came out around that.

like step.

So the innovations kind of sit in university and they're like, Hey, we had this super cool thing.

Biotech companies, entrepreneurs, or big pharma have to come along and grab those up and put the funding behind it to actually make them useful.

Right.

There's a big gap there.

But I think this is a tool that is more predictable that we can use now, but that doesn't mean that everything should change directly, immediately, where it is and where it's possible.

Biology-wise, I think that's a good, but you can't, not everywhere.

And what would be your, I mean, the demand of a patient, I can imagine, yes, patient reads or, but if a patient comes to you like that and they want to extract instead of reconstruct.

Exactly.

creating additional candidates, reducing the barrier to entry, reducing the amount of time it takes to get from I have an idea to I have a molecule that's ready to send to the lab.

And then if you think about the demand that AI itself will create, especially for an anthropic, Biology is a big kind of focus or it's like a goal.

It's like I said, it's the first thing in Machines of Love and Grace, which Zari Ahmed's book, it's the first thing that he talks about.

And he did work in biology as well.

The Life Sciences DNA podcast is sponsored by Agilesium Labs, a collaborative space where Agilesium works with its clients to co-develop and incubate POCs, products, and solutions.

To learn how Agilesium Labs can use the power of its generative AI for life sciences analytics, visit them at labs.agilesium.com. Sri,

we've got Mark Rahman on the show today.

Who is Mark? Mark is Alcon's Chief Data and AI Officer and Chief Information Officer for Research and Development.

His work brings together AI, data, and technology.

So he's well-positioned to talk about how these capabilities move from promising ideas to practical applications inside the life sciences company.

And for listeners who aren't familiar with Alcon, what is it? Alcon is an eye care company with two main businesses, surgical products and vision care.

It makes equipment and implantable lenses for eye surgery, as well as contact lenses and products for conditions such as dry eye.

But I completely agree.

I mean, I don't have tons of experience with the medical world, but I was at a conference a year or so ago and lithium came up in a completely different context than A psychiatrist gave a talk called Lithium Colon, a Biological Mystery.

And the point of the talk was to say that lithium has this very important medical use in the treatment of depression, bipolar.

And no one really knows why it helps, why it does the good that it does.

And the psychiatrist was saying, look, it really is a very effective treatment.

And all the sketches of how it achieves its benefits are extremely unsatisfactory.

It is, he said, a biological mystery.

Yeah, I mean, you said it.