Abraham Heifets was working at IBM Research on high performance data processing when his career interest veered toward drug discovery. A big data guy, he found himself studying organic chemistry—specifically chemical synthesis planning—and eventually enrolling at the University of Toronto where he earned a PhD in computer science. At Toronto, Heifets met Izhar Wallach, who was writing computational biology and structural algorithms for a small pharmaceutical company.
Down the hall from their computational biology group was a machine learning group run by Geoffrey Hinton, a pioneering scientist known primarily for his work on artificial neural networks. Dr. Hinton’s group was busy inventing all of the core techniques underlying the revolution in machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Dr. Wallach and Dr. Heifets saw the promise of these machine learning techniques. At the same time datasets that support these machine learning algorithms were starting to take off. So Dr. Heifets and Dr. Wallach co-founded Atomwise, and in 2015 moved their company to the San Francisco Bay area. (They are currently partnering with Charles River on drug discovery research.)
Eureka spoke with Dr. Heifets recently as part of a multi-part series on the influence of AI in Drug Discovery. Here are his edited responses.
Read the full article of Atomwise CEO, Abe Heifet's responses in Charles River's AI in Drug Discovery blog series - Commercializing Deep Neural Networks for Drug Discovery
About Atomwise
Atomwise is revolutionizing how drugs are discovered with AI. We invented the use of deep learning for structure-based drug discovery, today developing a pipeline of small-molecule drug candidates advancing into preclinical studies. Our AtomNet® technology has been used to unlock more undruggable targets than any other AI drug discovery platform. We are tackling over 600 unique disease targets across 775 collaborations spanning more than 250 partners around the world. Our portfolio of joint ventures and partnerships with leading pharmaceutical, agrochemical, and emerging biotechnology companies represents a collective deal value approaching $7 billion. Atomwise has raised over $174 million from leading venture capital firms to advance our mission to make better medicines, faster.
