Technology Partnership of Nagoya University, Inc.
World Class Research Contributing to Society
Keynote Speaker
Dr. Payel Das
Principal Research Staff Member and Manager, Trusted AI, IBM Research, IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center
Adjunct Associate Professor, Applied Physics and Applied Math Department, Columbia University
"Trusted AI for Accelerating Scientific Discovery"
Scientific discovery is one of primary factors underlying advancement of human race. However, traditional discovery process is slow compared to the growing need of new inventions. Machine learning and especially deep learning have achieved remarkable performance in domains like computer vision and natural language processing in recent years. Those methods have also infiltrated physics, chemistry, and medicine. Despite several successes and the potential, machine learning models are still at infancy in terms of driving and transforming scientific discovery.
In this talk, I will present a closed-loop paradigm to accelerate scientific discovery, which can seamlessly integrate machine learning, physics-based simulations, and wet lab experiments and enable new hypothesis and/or artefact generation and validation thereof. Development and use of novel deep generative models and reinforcement learning-based methods for designing novel antimicrobials, drug candidates, and metamaterials with desired functionality will be discussed. Finally, I will discuss the importance of adding crucial aspects, e.g. creativity, robustness, and interpretability, to infuse elements of trust in machine learning models in order to enable and add value to AI-driven discovery.
Platform Technology Presentation 1
Dr. Shinichiro Fuse
Professor, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Nagoya University
"Highly Efficient Amide Bond Formation Using Micro-Flow Technology"
Peptides have garnered much attention as drugs, therefore, the efficient production of peptides is highly important. However, traditional peptide production processes have been suffered from high cost and a lot of waste. In addition, high-yielding peptide chain elongation using racemizable amino acids and/or sterically hindered N-methyl amino acids is still challenging. We have developed efficient amide bond formations based on precise control of reaction time (< 1 sec) and temperature using micro-flow reactors. The developed synthetic methodology enabled high yielding synthesis of various peptides including racemizable and/or sterically hindered amino acids using low cost, less wasteful, and highly active agents.
Who we are...
Our laboratory started from Nov. 2019 in Nagoya University. We are interested in developing new micro-flow synthesis processes that can not be realized using traditional batch synthesis.
Platform Technology Presentation 2
Dr. Shoji Ohuchi
CSO, iBody Inc.
"Antibody Therapeutic Development from Patients’ Autoantibodies"
iBody Inc. has a unique platform technology for the massive and rapid isolation of monoclonal antibodies from single B cells. The technology "Ecobody" enables the discovery of patients’ autoantibodies applicable for the treatment of diseases including Cancer, Autoimmune disease, and Infectious disease. Antibodies contribute the clinical conditions of varieties of diseases. For example, survived patients of cancer and severe infectious diseases are supposed to produce antibodies suppressing the disease progression. Meanwhile, autoantibodies cause an onset and exacerbation in certain types of autoimmune diseases. Importantly, human autoantibodies recognize natural conformations and modifications of a target antigen under the natural in vivo environment. Thus, patients’ autoantibodies are the fine source for novel and truly effective antibody therapeutics.
Who we are...
iBody Inc. is a start-up company launched from Nagoya University, Japan, at Feb 2018. We have pioneered a unique technology for discovering, generating, and producing monoclonal antibodies from single B cells. Our mission is to contribute human healthcare by lightning monoclonal antibody development.
Platform Technology Presentation 3
Dr. Tomoyuki Yamada
CEO, Rarevariant Inc.
"Introduction of the NU based Rare-variant analysis Platform for drug discovery"
Rarevariant Inc. is a startup company that aims to social implementation of nationally funded projects, that collecting genomic and clinical information of patients with various types of rare diseases. The company established in 2020 and have an industry-academia collaboration laboratory in Nagoya University for accelerating construction of large-scale clinico-genomic integrated database.
In this presentation, we will introduce several technologies for nucleotide therapeutics that are going to be transferred to the company from Nagoya University. We also introduce an overview of data catalogue that we already collect or are going to collect, with our analyzing capacity of genomic sequencing laboratory that is going to setup till next March.
Lastly, we introduce our plan on what kind of analysis platform that we are going to develop, and how we are going to provide a function to extract valuable knowledge from the platform.
Platform Technology Presentation 4
Dr. Hyi-Man Park
Director, Discovery Research, RaQualia Pharma Inc.
Designated Professor, Department of Pharmacology, Research Institute of Environmental Medicine (RIeM), Nagoya University
"Innovative new drug discovery: global industry-academia collaboration"
RaQualia Pharma Inc. is a research oriented pharmaceutical company, originally launched as a spin-off from Pfizer Global R&D Nagoya. Based on the sophisticated science as our research engine, we have established enriched pipeline in clinical stages with our expertise in pain and gastrointestinal diseases.
In 2014, we made a decision to relocate all research facilities into Nagoya University from Pfizer Campus, and launched “RaQualia Pharma Industry-Academia Collaborative Research Center”. Indeed, our challenge had been successful, we were able to initiate more than ten academia-industry collaborations and expand our target disease area. These collaborations were leading to file new IPs in the advanced two projects. Having these fruitful outcomes, we are further expanding our research collaboration/partnership opportunity in US by launching a new office in UC San Diego in 2019. We are accelerating 1) global research collaboration, 2) license-out of existing our assets, 3) scouting of cutting edge technology in academia.
Who we are...
RaQualia Pharma Inc. was launched in 2008, and subsequently succeeded IPO in Japan in 2011. We license out our assets to the pharma for further development, currently there are one human drug and two animal drugs in the market.
RaQualia has track record for industry-industry or industry-academia collaboration from the fairly early stage of drug discovery.
“RaQualia Pharma Industry-Academia Collaborative Research Center” was launched under Research Institute of Environmental Medicine (RIeM), Nagoya University, to accelerate industry-academia collaboration for new drug development.