SLAS 2022 Highlights.pdf

3 INSIGHTS FROM INDUSTRY
SLAS; Connecting the Life Sciences
to Accelerate Research
Challenges in Drug Discovery; Where
are we now, and where are we going?
Combining AI and Zebrafish to
Accelerate Drug Discovery
34 THOUGHT LEADERS
Using AI to save the lives of mothers
and babies
How Important is the European
Ecosystem to Life Sciences
Research?
57 THOUGHT LEADERS
Diversifying STEM; the Importance of
Representation, Equity, and Inclusion
66 THOUGHT LEADERS
How can High-Content Screening
accelerate Drug Discovery?
BICO; Combining Life Sciences
Solutions to Further Human Health
Unlocking the power of proteins to
better understand human health
T A B L E O F
C O N T E N T S

SLAS; Connecting the Life Sciences to
Accelerate Research
As part of our SLAS Europe 2022 coverage, we speak to Vicki Loise, CEO of
SLAS, about the importance of collaboration, communication, and conferences
in accelerating life sciences research.
Please can you introduce yourself and tell us
about your role at the Society for Laboratory
Automation and Screening (SLAS)?
My name is Vicki Loise, and I am the CEO of the Society for Laboratory
Automation and Screening, also known as SLAS.
SLAS is an international professional society
comprised of over 16,000 members from
various scientific backgrounds, including
industry, academia, and manufacturing and
development. What are some of the core
missions and values at SLAS?
Our core mission is twofold. The first is around education and providing the
most relevant, recent content to our community that helps them advance in
their work and careers. The second part of our mission is about connecting all
of those people. We have an inclusive community, and we want to make sure
that we are their focal point for connecting with each other.
There is so much happening in this field right now. Lab automation was on a
relatively fast trajectory pre-COVID, and COVID made that grow exponentially.
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Vicki Loise
CEO
Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS)
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There is an understandable difficulty when you are used to having 40 people in
a lab at one time, and suddenly, you are told that you only have four people in
that lab, yet expectations are the same.
This meant that, for many, automation was the only way that those
expectations were going to be met, so there have been tremendous
developments in lab automation over the last couple of years. This also arose
from the pandemic and learning how folks are trying to use that automation
when the provider may not have been able to come in and do training. Many of
our tech providers are adapting their equipment so that folks can learn how to
use that equipment on the job.
One of the other things that have come out of the last couple of years is
realizing that we can do science better and faster. A lot of what we have learned
is to figure out different ways to do what has always been done but in a way
that delivers science into the hands of the public as quickly as possible.
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SLAS Community: Where Science and Technology Unite
SLAS Community: Where Science and Technology Unite

You offer a huge variety of resources for
members, such as international conferences,
grants, and scholarships, as well as
networking opportunities. Why is having such
a vast portfolio of resources critical in
furthering your pursuit of ‘research
excellence’?
We have a truly broad scientific community and are trying to ensure that we
deliver a value proposition to that entire community. We know people come to
us for different reasons and at different points in their careers, so we want to
ensure that we have the right things for them when they come to those entry
points.
Working alongside your members in a variety
of life sciences disciplines allows you to help
accelerate research and new discoveries. How
do you feel the life sciences sector has
changed over the last ten years, and are there
any innovations that you were particularly
excited by?
There were certainly a lot of great innovations coming to the forefront over the
last ten years, pre-COVID. Everybody is excited about CRISPR: the general
public has been using CRISPR in new and innovative ways, especially over the
last two years, but the way it was used during the pandemic was simply
unprecedented. If anybody had the opportunity to watch our keynote speaker
on our opening day - Steve Rees, from AstraZeneca - he outlined how this
disruption of a pandemic created this innovation.
This innovation forced our community to assess how they do things daily and
ask those tough questions: “Why are we doing it this way? And can we do it
better?” In doing this, they found a range of better ways to do science so that
things like PCR testing could be developed and delivered to the public quickly so
that vaccines could be developed from technology that had been around for a
long time. Still, we could finally find exactly that right niche for that technology
at a critical moment.

What has emerged is this breaking down of barriers between companies.
Everybody is far more open to collaborating and breaking down some barriers.
Image Credit: elenabsl/Shutterstock.com
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has halted
much scientific research worldwide and
stopped in-person scientific conferences and
exhibitions, with them becoming virtual
instead. How important is having in-person
conferences to SLAS? What are the advantages
of these for the life sciences?
In-person conferences are critical to our community. This is, for us, a record-
breaking attendance for our Europe conference. It is only the third time we
have held it, and we had to take a two-year break between year two and year
three, so to have that record-breaking attendance tells you how much people
are craving those all-important in-person interactions and doing the things that
we just talked about. To be able to walk up to somebody, have a conversation,
and challenge or validate each other’s ideas.
You just do not get that virtually. Virtual was what we had to do when COVID
hit because we needed to make sure that there was some way for the
community to stay connected, and it was truly the only option. So now that we
are in a place where being back face-to-face is possible, and we can do it safely,

it is magical. You can feel the buzz around us, which continues to help us as an
organization to understand where the community is, what they need, and how
we can ensure that we are delivering that for them.
One lesson that has been internationally
recognized from the pandemic is the
importance of collaboration. Scientific
advancements can be made quickly when
academic, industry, and government needs are
aligned. What role do you believe collaboration
has within the life sciences sector, and how
does SLAS help to foster innovation within its
work?
I think collaboration is the key. A collaborative effort was set up between
industry, academia, and government, and the results tell the whole story. The
same goes for the vaccine developers in the US with Pfizer, BioNTech, and
Moderna. So, a lot of government funding went into making sure that those
technologies and vaccines happened as quickly as possible and then distributed
as quickly as possible. Without collaboration, things will move much, much
slower - if anywhere at all.
We are, again, breaking down some of those barriers, opening doors, and being
willing to have conversations with your counterparts, whether across industry to
academia or government, is absolutely critical. That is another big reason why
SLAS is holding these events: we make it possible for all of those sectors to sit
down and have a conversation with someone doing very similar science, but
maybe in that different sector. There are not a lot of lawyers or corporate
executives standing around – instead, they can just talk about the science,
which is how we get to the end result.
Another thing is that science is not merely limited to those talks. All the people
on this floor are scientists. That is how these technologies are developed: by
having conversations with their customers - so there is a great deal of science
that gets exchanged on the exhibit floor and a lot of learning that can happen
on the exhibit floor.

SLAS Ignite is one of your initiatives in helping
to promote collaboration within science. You
also offer the SLAS Ignite Award, which
recognizes innovative new companies within
the life sciences. Why do you believe it
important to highlight some of the incredible
new start-ups we are seeing?
To put it simply, start-ups are where it is at. Start-up companies are where new
and innovative science begins. Very often, those start-up companies are
working on a challenge or a problem that several large companies are having as
well, but they do not have the time, resources, or focus for that one particular
challenge, and so the start-up company is focused on figuring that out.
Keeping those start-up companies as part of SLAS and our events is one of our
top priorities. We make significant investments in things like Innovation Avenue
and the SLAS Ignite program so that those start-up companies have a platform
to talk about their products - not just with the attendees but with the other
companies that are here.

Image Credit: SLAS
At many of your in-person events, you offer
networking opportunities for students and
early-career professionals looking to start
their careers in life sciences. Why is allowing
young people the opportunity to network with
professionals in the industry so important?
How can these opportunities help continue
incredible scientific advancements and
encourage more people to pursue a career
within science?
As we have mentioned, collaboration and networking are the keys to success in
science. So many of these early-career scientists are now having that
opportunity to build a network. They have either been at university - or maybe
working as a postdoc - and simply have not had the same opportunities. This is
where we provide them with not only the place to do it but also with some
mentoring and training: trying to bring them together with people who can
either help advance their career or help them advance a question that they are
working on.
Those folks are the future of SLAS, and they are the future of the life sciences
community, so we want to make sure that we give them that opportunity to
start building that network. We do this so that they can grow their careers –
even possibly becoming a version of Steve Rees in 10 or 20 years - pulling
together a network and working to solve one of the world’s most significant
challenges.
How can people get involved with SLAS and
become a member?
It is very easy to be part of SLAS. You can go to our website, where you can
find information about joining and volunteering. We also have folks in our office
who are happy to talk to anybody with questions at any time.
We have a membership department that can answer questions, and you can
find their names and how to reach them on the site.

What do you believe the future of life sciences
to look like? Are there any particular sectors
that you are excited to watch evolve?
I am really excited about what is happening in the data science space right
now. The way that science and research are evolving means that huge amounts
of data are being generated in the lab. One of the challenges labs are having at
the moment is how to manage that data: how to best use it, store it, slice it
and dice it.
Several companies have emerged over the last couple of years focused on
precisely that issue, helping those labs with that data and using AI to help them
with some of their decision-making. This is a space that I think is going to be
really interesting and explode over the next year or two.
Image Credit: PopTika/Shutterstock.com
What does the future look like for SLAS? Are
there any exciting projects in the pipeline?
We have a couple of very exciting projects coming up. In 2021, the SLAS board
of directors and some of our volunteer leadership team put together a new
strategic plan that starts here - in 2022 - and takes us through 2026,

containing ten action steps.
One of the items is to develop a lab for the future platform, so we plan to
collect resources and information to be a dynamic and constantly evolving
platform where community members can interact. We wanted to create a
location where users could come and see what they should be looking at; how
they should be solving a problem, and finally, how they should be setting up
their labs for the future to make sure that they are always on the cutting edge
of automation to do the work that they are doing.
What do you love most about SLAS?
I really do love the people in this community. They are, first and foremost,
some of the kindest people I have ever met. They do not come in with any
agendas or egos. They genuinely want to work together to solve the life
sciences problems and advance their research, and they care about this
organization.
This organization's leadership - and the volunteer leadership - has always been
phenomenal. That has always been their number one priority: to make sure
that the organization is moving forward and growing, and it is an absolute
delight to work with them.
About Vicki Loise
Vicki Loise is chief executive officer for SLAS, the Society for Laboratory
Automation and Screening, a global non-profit organization dedicated to
advancing life sciences discovery and technology. In this role, she directs the
planning, development, and implementation of Society programs. Other
responsibilities include interacting with the Board of Directors to establish
strategic directions; leading planning efforts for the global growth and
sustainability of the Society; and supervising all professional and contract staff

team members.
Prior to SLAS, Loise worked for Kellen, a global
association management firm. As vice president of
association management at Kellen, she provided strategic
planning and guidance to international societies, led
business development efforts that increased revenue and
raised awareness, and mentored professional team
members in executive-caliber skills. From 2005-2014,
Vicki served as the executive director for the Association
of University Technology Managers (AUTM), where she
raised awareness of the association and the profession, while providing strong
stewardship and governance to the organization. From 1993-2005 Loise worked
for the National PTA completing her time there as Director of Development.
Loise began her career in association management with AAOMS, American
Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons, from 1991-1993 in their
meetings department.
Loise is a member of the American Society of Association Executives and
Association Forum. She earned her Certified Meeting Professional designation in
1995 and Certified Association Executive designation in 2005. She is a graduate
of Central Michigan University, having earned a bachelor’s degree in
interpersonal and public communications.
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Challenges in Drug Discovery; Where are
we now, and where are we going?
As part of our SLAS Europe 2022 coverage, we speak to Steve Rees, Vice-
President of Discovery Biology at AstraZeneca, about the challenges currently
faced by the drug discovery sector and the new technologies that will help to
overcome them.
Please could you introduce yourself and tell us
about your role at AstraZeneca?
My name is Steve Rees, and I lead the Discovery Biology department at
AstraZeneca based in Cambridge (UK), Gothenburg (SE) and Waltham (US). We
do three things to help discover new medicines. We identify new drug targets;
we then create the reagents and assays that allow us to turn those targets into
projects and we are increasingly interested in cell and gene therapies.
Produced in Partnership with Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS)
Jul 8 2022
Steve Rees
Vice-President Discovery Biology
AstraZeneca

You were the opening keynote speaker for the
SLAS Europe 2022 exhibition titled 'Challenges
and Opportunities in Drug Discovery.' What do
you personally believe to be some of the
biggest challenges currently faced by the drug
discovery sector, and how is AstraZeneca
helping to address these issues?
The challenges faced in drug discovery are the same as they always have been:
Which disease should I work on? Which target should I choose to work with that
might enable me to create a medicine that could treat that disease? Finally,
what is the patient population to which I would deliver that medicine?
These challenges are essentially the same as they always have been. What has
changed are the technologies and capabilities available to help us address these
challenges. We have seen considerable advances in technologies like genomics,
transcriptomics, and proteomics, gene editing, data science, artificial
intelligence and machine learning that are allowing us to understand diseases
better, to identify better medicines.
We have seen the launch of a range of new therapeutic modalities, from
PROTACs to siRNAs to messenger RNAs to cell and gene therapies, giving us
different ways of treating disease. We can now access patient tissue and use

Challenges in Drug Discovery - Steve Rees, AstraZeneca - SLAS E
Challenges in Drug Discovery - Steve Rees, AstraZeneca - SLAS E…
…

methods like proteomics and transcriptomics to characterize that tissue,
allowing us to identify patient biomarkers that tell us which patients to treat
with the medicine. We are using these technologies at AstraZeneca and across
the field to drive future success in drug discovery.
Image Credit: paulista/Shutterstock.com
Despite the challenges currently faced by this
sector, we have seen great progress in the last
decade. What have been some of the biggest
advancements in drug discovery throughout
the last decade? How has the emergence of
these technologies furthered our
understanding of disease pathology?
The most significant single technology transforming drug discovery over the last
ten years is CRISPR-Cas9. This offers the ability to very precisely delete or
change any gene in any cell type. CRISPR was only published in 2012: before
2012, nobody had heard of it. CRISPR is now used in every project that we
have within AstraZeneca.
We use it to create cell and animal models of disease that help us to understand
the role of targets in disease. We use these cell models to help us understand
how our molecules work. We use it to discover new targets through a whole
new science called functional genomics which allows us to delete one by one,
each and every gene in the genome, to determine what the effect is on the

biology of the cell. We use it to create cell therapy medicines and use it as a
medicine in its own right.
There have of course been many other technology advances; a reduction in the
cost of genome sequencing enabling the sequencing of thousands to millions of
genomes, the creation of transcriptomic and proteomic technologies to
understand disease, Cryo-electron microscopy to generate structures of large
proteins, and of course the advent of Machine Learning and Artificial
Intelligence in drug discovery.
One field that has seen particular attention
recently is artificial intelligence. Despite its
many proven benefits in drug discovery, some
scientists are still hesitant to adopt AI in the
lab. Why is this, and how can we increase
individuals' understanding of AI?
Within AstraZeneca, we are applying artificial intelligence across the drug
discovery process. For instance, we are using artificial intelligence to help us
identify new drug targets. We are establishing whether we can use it to mine
the world's data, to connect pieces of data that the scientists will not connect
themselves, to generate new hypotheses for treating disease.
We use it in chemistry to help tell us what molecule we should make next and
how we should make that molecule. We use it in biology; we use it to analyze
images from high content screening. We also use it to predict patient
biomarkers – so as you can see, it is being used across the board.
There has been some resistance amongst the scientific community to using
artificial intelligence and machine learning, but I think that stems from the fact
that perhaps there is a concern that some of these methods could replace
scientists doing their jobs, as well as a little bit of uncertainty about how AI
machine learning works.
The way that we are trying to break that down in AstraZeneca is to view
artificial intelligence and machine learning simply as tools that allow us to do
our jobs better; tools that allow us to simplify what we have done in the past,
and tools that allow us to generate more knowledge than we could have in the
past.

We encourage our scientists to think about the problems they are trying to
solve with AI, rather than worrying about how a machine learning algorithm
works. We encourage our scientists to use these methods to solve small
problems, such as the use of image recognition to confirm that the cells you are
working with are the cells you think they are, as well as big problems.
Image Credit: Ico Maker/Shutterstock.com
Exhibitions like SLAS have been helping
researchers, institutions, and organizations
collaborate on some of the challenges various
sectors face in the life sciences for many years.
How important do you believe collaboration is
to the life sciences sector and, in particular,
drug discovery, and what benefits does being
able to attend these exhibitions have for
collaborative partnerships?
Collaboration is completely integral to drug discovery and the life sciences
sector, and I would go as far as to say that, without collaboration, we will fail to
discover new medicines.
We see that within our work at AstraZeneca: we have over 1600 collaborations
globally with academia, biotech companies and other pharma.
To give you a great example, in 2019, we opened the AstraZeneca Cancer

Research UK Centre for Functional Genomics in Cambridge. This is a
collaboration between AstraZeneca and Cancer Research UK, Europe's largest
cancer charity. We partnered to create technology platforms that allow us to
understand how our cancer medicines work and, again, to identify potential new
drug targets in cancer. By working together, we combine the strength of the
academic community in terms of technologies and basic understanding of
disease and cell models, with AstraZeneca’s drug discovery expertise, to create
a centre that meets both our needs.
By working in this way, we can do much more than either of us could do
independently, which sums up collaboration. Meetings like SLAS are the perfect
opportunity to create networks; to meet other scientists to create new
collaborations.
For instance, when AstraZeneca moved to Cambridge, we had to build an
entirely new infrastructure for compound management. We set up a
collaboration to develop acoustic tube technology with organisations including
Danaher, Azenta and Titians Software. Each organization owned a different
piece of the technology required to make the ultimate solution: collaboration
and partnership arose entirely because of networks created through meetings
like SLAS.
The COVID-19 pandemic has also highlighted
the importance of collaboration within science.
As well as the importance of collaboration, are
there any other lessons we can take from the
pandemic and implement into life sciences
practices?
For me, the most important lesson from the pandemic - from a life sciences
perspective - is the requirement to continue investing, developing, and creating
new technologies.
People often ask me, "Isn't it fantastic that we discovered new COVID vaccines
in nine months?" I always want to reply with a different perspective. We did not
discover new COVID vaccines in nine months - instead, we were able to create
COVID vaccines because of the previous ten years of basic research that had
gone into creating the technology platforms that created those vaccines.
We need to continue investing in fundamental research to create new

technologies, which will have an application at some point in the future. For
instance, BioNTech was not established to create vaccines or treat infectious
diseases. BioNTech was established to create cancer vaccines - but when the
pandemic came along, they realized that their technology could be rapidly
adapted to create COVID vaccines. This fundamental investment in research,
therefore, facilitated their vaccine rollout.
Image Credit: BaLL LunLa/Shutterstock.com
Continued advancements in technology have
been one of the most significant driving forces
behind the discoveries of new therapeutics.
Are you hopeful we will see new therapeutics
emerging over the coming years with
continued technological advancements? What
would this mean for global health worldwide?
I firmly believe we have a unique opportunity to transform global health in the
coming years. That combines our ability to better understand disease through
technologies like proteomics and transcriptomics and to deliver a range of new
medicine modalities into the clinic.

As we look towards 2030, we will see messenger RNA medicines building off the
success of the COVID vaccine. We will see gene editing as a medicine. The first
CRISPR-based gene editing medicines are now in phase two clinical studies.
These are medicines that have the opportunity to cure critical, life-threatening
diseases, and they will be reaching patients.
The medicines toolbox, which historically has been small molecules and
antibodies, will encompass a range of different medicine types as we move
through this decade. As I say, it is through doing that, that we will be able to
both treat disease and move from treatment to cure.
Are there any areas within the current drug
discovery industry that would especially
benefit from new technologies and processes?
How might that impact other areas within the
healthcare sector?
For us in AstraZeneca, and for me personally, the technology that would
transform a lot of what I do is the development of targeted delivery systems for
nucleic acid medicines. This means nanoparticle-type delivery systems that
would allow me to deliver nucleotide therapeutics in a targeted way to any cell
in the body. That does not currently exist today. We can deliver a nanoparticle
medicine to the liver using LNP or similar technologies. If you want to deliver
nanoparticle medicines to the heart, the kidney, the pancreas, or the lung - that
is much more challenging.
If we can solve that problem, we will be able to deliver many medicines and
treat a whole range of diseases in this way.
You have served as the Chair of the European
Laboratory Research and Innovation Group.
What role does innovation play within life
science, particularly in drug discovery?
Without innovation in drug discovery, we will find nothing. We need to innovate
today to deliver the projects we are currently running faster and more
effectively than ever before. However, we also need to be focusing on
innovating for tomorrow.

What transformative technologies will allow us to be better at drug discovery as
we move forward? When you reflect on the likes of the mRNA vaccines, that is a
beautiful example of innovation that has transformed our ability to treat a
specific disease. Twenty years ago, we would not have had RNA vaccines. The
technology did not exist. We now have RNA vaccines with the potential to
vaccinate people against COVID and various diseases.
Throughout your impressive career, what has
been your proudest achievement?
My proudest achievement is our work during the COVID-19 pandemic to build
the Cambridge COVID-19 Test Centre. This was a collaboration between
AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, the University of Cambridge, and Charles River
to create a diagnostic test center in Cambridge. The goal was to test tens of
thousands of samples daily as part of the UK government's national PCR testing
program.
We created a center from nothing to an operational lab in about six weeks, and
that was achieved through amazing collaboration, partnership, incredibly hard
work, and wonderful people. It was, hopefully, a once-in-a-lifetime event that
made a huge difference to people during a national crisis.

Image Credit: richardjohnson/Shutterstock.com
What's next for you in AstraZeneca? Are there
any exciting projects that you're involved in?
Every project that we are involved in at AstraZeneca is exciting. The most
exciting thing we are doing today at AstraZeneca is our work to identify novel
drug targets related to disease. We are using a variety of different methods that
will allow us to understand disease and identify new targets, which we can then
take on into discovery. Using these technologies, we hope to identify targets
critical to disease processes, which will increase our ability to deliver medicines
to the clinic successfully.
About Steve Rees
Steve is Vice-President of Discovery Biology at AstraZeneca with responsibility
for reagent generation and assay development, functional genomics, and cell
and gene therapy. Previously Steve led the Screening Sciences department with
accountability for Compound Management, Hit Discovery and Lead Optimisation
biology. Prior to joining AstraZeneca, Steve worked at GlaxoSmithKline for 24
years.
He has served as Chair of the European Laboratory
Research and Innovation Group and Chair of the
European council of the Society of Laboratory Automation
and Screening, and is Industry Trustee of the British
Pharmacological Society. Steve was awarded an OBE in
2021 for services to science and the COVID-19 response.
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Combining AI and Zebraﬁsh to Accelerate
Drug Discovery
about your role at ZeClinics?
My name is Javier Terriente, and I have a PhD in molecular biology. I spent 15
years in academia, and in 2013 we founded ZeClinics. I am the co-founder of
ZeClinics, but I have also been leading the scientific side of the company. I was
the scientific director until a couple of years ago, and today I am the chief of
drug development.
Essentially, my role now within the company is to lead our internal drug
development programs, and I also help with the implementation of new
technologies like artificial intelligence and so on. In a way, I would say that I am
the chief innovative officer in the company.
Jul 1 2022
As part of our SLAS Europe 2022 coverage, we speak to Dr. Javier Terriente,
Co-founder and Chief of Drug Development at ZeClinics, about how zebrafish
could be the future for discovering new therapeutics.
Dr. Javier Terriente
Director of Something
Co-founder and Chief of Drug Development at ZeClinics

Image Credit: Kazakov Maksim/Shutterstock
ZeClinics is a contract research organization
(CRO) specializing in zebrafish research. Why
was ZeClinics founded, and what are some of
its core missions and values?
First and foremost, ZeClinics was founded on the basis of our expertise, which
we felt could bring something new to the industry. As an academic, I had a lot
of experience working with zebrafish. I was very much focused on basic
research problems, but we understood from early on that the zebrafish could
bring a lot of biological and experimental advantages to the industry that may
be useful for drug discovery, target discovery, and understanding the safety of
new compounds and more. So, we thought, ‘Why not?’. Why not create a
company that can bring that expertise to the industry? Our company started
small and has grown to 40 people – and we hope to grow more in the future.
In terms of core missions and values, I would say that our main mission is
excellence and quality. We think - and hope - that we are always providing the
best scientific output with the best quality, in terms of data management, in
terms of scientific quality, and in terms of translatability of the results to

humans.
I would say this excellence is what really drives us. The second mission that we
have is to accelerate research. Within everything that we do, we seek to get
drugs to patients earlier and at the lowest possible cost.
Your solutions focus on zebrafish as its model.
Why are zebrafish such an excellent model to
use for drug discovery research?
The first thing to know about zebrafish is that typically, we work with larvae,
which are not considered animals until they reach around the day 5 mark.
Essentially, you operate with an in vitro system that has all the biological
features of an animal: gaining all the advantages of working with an animal,
like complex biology.
For instance, there is organ physiology, and the biological processes happening
therein are remarkably similar to those occurring in a human being: 80% of the
genes in zebrafish are echoed in humans, so researchers can understand and
model disease; understand the role of genes in the context of disease; and of
course, look for drugs that are modulating these targets.
From an experimental point of view, a zebrafish is a small animal. This means
that, like for any in vitro model, you use multiwell plates to test hundreds of
drugs per week. Essentially, it is an in vitro system that brings the best from
animal models, and, at the same time, facilitates the obtaining of big data and
high biological translatability. All in all, we believe that it is a very good model
with which to perform this research and accelerate the field.

By using zebrafish as models for research, this
also reduces the use of experimental animal
models. Why is this important to consider
when conducting new research?
There are two dimensions that are interlinked. The first one is obviously ethical:
of course, the aim for all researchers – and society in general - is either not to
use animals in research or to minimize the use of animals in research as far as
possible.
By using zebrafish embryos that are five days post-fertilization, researchers are
not using an animal, as it is considered by regulatory bodies. This facilitates all
the advantages of working with an animal without actually having to work with
an animal.
This approach allows the user to find the best drugs - or make most of the
experiments required to advance a drug in terms of safety, efficacy, or any
other criterion without having to use an animal. This means that if it later
becomes a necessity to use animals, researchers can use their best candidate.
All things considered, users see reductions in time, money, and the use of
animals.

Javier Terriente - ZeClinics at SLAS Europe 2022
Javier Terriente - ZeClinics at SLAS Europe 2022

The second dimension is regulatory: given that zebrafish embryos five-day
post-fertilization are not categorized as animals, this will avoid the imminent
regulatory restrictions within the chemical industry, eliminating all animal
research.
This means that zebrafish will become even more of an ideal alternative to the
use of animals in research because they provide largely the same information
that can be obtained from a rodent or a dog but are not classified as animals.
Image Credit: Micha Weber/Shutterstock
You currently offer three service platforms
(ZeTox, ZeGenesis, and ZeEfficacy). Can you
tell us more about these platforms and their
applications within research?
The three central platforms we offer are ZeTox, ZeGenesis, and ZeEfficacy.
Within ZeTox, what we have is a portfolio to analyze the toxicity of drugs from a
general point of view but also to understand cardiotoxicity and other types of
organ-toxicities. This platform is always evolving, so we are always generating
new validations and proving the translation ability of this experimental model,
and also implementing new tests.

Next, we have ZeGenesis, which is essentially the creation of new genetic
models. These are models that facilitate the understanding of the biological
process within disease, which is typically coupled with ZeEfficacy (the use of
zebrafish for understanding the efficacy of drugs in the context of disease).
Within ZeEfficacy, there are a lot of different disease models that we can offer
our clients and custom phenotypic screenings including complex behavioral
analysis.
For instance, if a client wishes to study diabetes, we can create a model that
suits the needs of this client and characterize it phenotypically for target
discovery, as well as for drug discovery purposes. This is so, because it is also
important to understand the role of genes in the context of disease, and this is
a very important point when you have a wealth of data like genomic data
coming from patients: to really be able to pinpoint which genes are associated
with in disease. This is something that we do a lot with our clients.
In addition to these three platforms, we also develop our own drugs, so we
have a form of dual business model. This means that, on the one hand, we
develop products and services for our clients, but on the other hand, we also
use these technologies that we are developing to discover our own drugs in
different indications.
You are talking at SLAS EU 2022 about your
ZeBYTE platform, which is currently in
development. Can you tell us more about this
platform and how it works? How will this new
platform differ from the other platforms you
currently have available to clients?
ZeBYTE is not going to be a separate platform. Essentially, it is a holistic
platform: something that allows us to undertake all the work currently taking
place at the company. It is more than a platform: I would say that it is an
initiative. It is something that is always evolving, and essentially, what it does is
implement artificial intelligent technologies all around the experimental and
research pipeline that we perform at the company.
As such, we are implementing deep learning algorithms for extracting data from
our images and videos obtained from experimental samples. Basically, to

streamline phenotypic extraction and phenotypic analysis. Then, we are using
machine learning and deep learning to analyze the related data that we
generate: to understand and find casualties between our data, to find new
targets, discover new hits, and so on.
It is a holistic way of going or transitioning from only a wet lab to a digital or a
combination of wet lab and dry lab. Something I think is interesting about this
platform is the fact that we can generate biological data from disease models,
then we can treat this data through artificial intelligence to generate new
hypotheses, and we can go back to the lab the next day to prove those
hypotheses experimentally. It is a cycle that we think is going to be very
interesting for our clients and for our own research.
By giving this talk at SLAS, you are able to
highlight the continued scientific
advancements we are seeing in the industry.
How vital are in-person conferences and
exhibitions, such as SLAS, in accelerating new
ideas and creating important discussions?
I think they are vital. The point about in-person meetings is that there is a level
of spontaneity: things simply happen in a different way than they do in a video
conference. During the pandemic, all of us have gone digital, and conferences
and meetings which were in person can be done via video conference, but it is
very difficult to substitute that intangible quality of a conference with a video
conference.
I think that it is very important to come to in-person meetings: to meet people;
to meet friends; to find new collaborations; to find new providers, and of
course, to find new clients. It is vital for the survival of the company.
You are also working on the intersection
between laboratory research and artificial
intelligence (AI). How important is adopting
emerging techniques such as AI to life
sciences research? What are some of the
advantages of combining AI techniques into
your solutions?

Rather than ‘important’, I would consider this adoption as essential. To put it
another way, I do not believe that any company will survive the next 10 years
without using artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is just a better way to
extract meaningful information from your data: it is a way to accelerate and
accommodate your research, and it provides a competitive edge that is vital to
the continued survival of a company.
From a research point of view, by analyzing data with AI we might find genes
connected with diseases that were uncovered. That is likely going to provide
competitive solutions to our company. In other words, we will not follow the
same hypothesis as others (work on the same targets), but we hope will create
new biological hypotheses, which is going to be great for research and,
eventually, great for patients.
Image Credit: Gorodenkoff/Shutterstock
Are you hopeful that your ZeBYTE platform will
help to accelerate the discovery of new
therapeutic targets and drugs? What would
this mean for global health?
In this type of work, we are already seeing the use of artificial intelligence and

how it is accelerating research by uncovering things that were previously
hidden.
In terms of how this is going to translate into human health: if the technology
and the platform are adopted by many people - which is what we hope - we will
definitely help other companies as well as ourselves to find targets and
eventually cure diseases that are currently untreatable. This could really cause
a paradigm change.
You partner with a large variety of research
areas, including pharma, agrochemical, and
cosmetic companies. How important do you
believe collaboration is to science and
ZeClinics?
It is very difficult for any small company like ourselves to do everything right. It
is important to focus on what you do right and try to find the best partner for
these other areas where you cannot be the best – letting your organization be
the best when you partner with another.
This is happening both for small companies like ours and larger pharmaceutical
companies. Across the field, we see larger companies working with smaller
companies: buying or collaborating to get better solutions or better
technological advancements. This is going to happen and, in the end, will
benefit both the sector and the patients.
What’s next for ZeClinics? Are you involved in
any exciting projects?
For me, the most exciting imminent project is the full implementation of
ZeBYTE. In addition, we have several different drug discovery programs that we
hope will spin out next year into new companies as we did with the cardio
programs that we began in 2019 within a company called ZeCardio
Therapeutics.
On the other hand, from a service point of view, we are offering more and more
new services within the metabolic area and in the neuro-degeneration area. We
are hoping that we will cover more areas for our clients and be increasingly
innovative in what we do in the future.

What are you excited for about SLAS 2022?
We are currently seeing lots of interesting technologies and the rise of
organoids and organ chips, which can be great models to complement what we
do. We are also seeing lots in terms of automation. In general, I think that the
sector is thriving.
We see people coming from different sectors here: mathematicians, big
pharma, and small biotech scientists and engineers. In general, it is a very
good place to merge different sensitivities.
Something else I have seen in this conference that I have never seen in other
conferences within the sector is a focus on diversity and inclusivity, which I
think is hugely important: considering diversity in terms of gender, race, sex,
and more.
Of course, that is not technology, but it is important for our day-to-day work
and another key takeaway from this conference.
Where can readers find more information?
ZeClinics: www.zeclinics.com
ZeCardio Therapeutics: www.zecardiotherapeutics.com
Read more about the development of ZeBYTE: https://www.zeclinic
s.com/science/zebyte-platform-to-predict-the-effect-of-drugs-based-on-
the-use-of-zebrafish-and-artificial-intelligence/
About Dr. Javier Terriente
Dr. Javier Terriente is a biochemist with a PhD in developmental genetics. He
has more than 20 years of research and managing experience in the Academy

and the Biotech industry.
In 2013, he co-founded ZeClinics (www.zeclinics.com), a
vibrant biotech that exploits zebrafish as a research
model for performing drug and target discovery, chemical
assessment and understanding human disease. ZeClinics
provides research services to third companies and
academic groups, while it develops internal drug
discovery programs.
More recently, Javier co-founded ZeCardio Therapeutics
(www.zecardiotherapeutics.com), a spinout from ZeClinics that focuses on the
discovery of therapies to treat cardiovascular diseases. From 2013 to 2020 he
acted as Chief Scientific Officer at ZeClinics.
He now plays the same role in ZeCardioTx, while acting as Chief of Drug
Development at ZeClinics. Per his role in both companies, Javier manages a
growing scientific team, has directed several PhD theses, and published multiple
research articles on the use of zebrafish for addressing drug toxicity and
discovering new therapeutic drugs and targets.
In addition to these roles, he serves as Vice-President at Asebio, the Spanish
association of biotech companies.

Using AI to save the lives of mothers and
babies
As part of our SLAS Europe 2022 coverage, we speak to Professor Patricia
Maguire from the University College Dublin about their AI_PREMie technology
and how it can help to save mothers and babies lives.
what inspired your career in artificial
intelligence (AI)?
My name is Patricia Maguire, and I am a professor of biochemistry at University
College, Dublin (UCD). Four years ago, I was appointed director of the UCD
Institute for Discovery, a major university research institute in UCD, and our
focus is cultivating interdisciplinary research. In that role, I first became excited
by the possibilities of integrating AI into my research.
Jun 24 2022
ought Leaders
Patricia Maguire
Professor of Biochemistry
University College Dublin
Thought Leaders

AI has seen increased attention in recent
years, especially concerning its adoption in
healthcare settings. Despite this, obstacles still
need to be overcome before it is commonplace
within research. What do you believe to be
some of the biggest challenges surrounding
the adoption of AI in clinical settings?
I think there are two major obstacles to adopting AI in healthcare. The first is
that when it comes to the actual deployment of that AI in a clinical setting in
the real world, there is a significant gap from that lab-based tech development
to getting it deployed in the clinic and operationalized there. The second is that
once that AI is operationalized, the frontline staff may have difficulty adopting
it. Staff are going to be really busy, and their time is valuable. We need to offer
them practical solutions that give them reliable results that augments their
clinical decision-making.

AI in Clinical Healthcare - Patricia Maguire at SLAS Europe 2022
AI in Clinical Healthcare - Patricia Maguire at SLAS Europe 2022
Thought Leaders

Image Credit: Jsnow my wolrd/Shutterstock.com
You are currently the director of the
ConwaySPHERE research group at University
College Dublin. Please could you tell us more
about this research group and its missions?
I co-direct the UCD Conway SPHERE Research Group with my hematology
colleagues, Professor Fionnuala Ní Áinle and Dr. Barry Kevane. Our mission is to
understand and help diagnose inflammatory diseases, and we work together as
a group of clinicians, academic staff, and scientists, collaborating both nationally
and internationally.
For AI_PREMie it is a truly transdisciplinary team that we have brought together
– encompassing clinicians and frontline staff from the three Dublin maternity
hospitals. In doing so, we have covered 50% of all births in Ireland. We have
brought these hospitals together with a host of scientists from across University
College Dublin and data scientists from industry, namely the SAS Institute and
Microsoft. The whole AI_PREMie team's mission is to get this prototype test to
every woman who needs it worldwide because we believe we will save lives.
Thought Leaders

You are giving a talk at SLAS Europe 2022
titled 'AI_PREMie: saving lives of mothers and
babies using AI.' What will you be discussing
in this talk, and what can people expect?
I will discuss our project AI PREMie, which brings together cutting-edge
biochemical, clinical, and machine learning expertise. By bringing them
together, we have developed a new prototype test for risk stratification in
preeclampsia.
As demonstrated in your latest research,
AI_PREMie can accurately help to diagnose
preeclampsia, a serious complication affecting
one in ten pregnancies. What are the benefits
of accurately diagnosing preeclampsia not only
for the women and their babies but also for
healthcare settings?
Fifty thousand women and 500,000 babies are lost to preeclampsia every year,
and an additional 5 million babies are born prematurely - sometimes very
prematurely - because of preeclampsia. It is easy to see how devastating
preeclampsia is as a disorder: it affects our most vulnerable in society, their

AI-PREMie
AI-PREMie
Thought Leaders

whole families, and their whole communities.
If we can diagnose preeclampsia in a much timelier manner, we can deliver
efficient, effective healthcare that can have a massive impact on the societal
good. Not only will this allow us to prevent premature births, but we can also
save lives.
What are some of the benefits of using AI tools
such as AI_PREMie in diagnosis compared to
current diagnostic methods?
There have been no significant advances in preeclampsia diagnosis. We are still
using screening tests that were introduced decades ago. We look at high blood
pressure, and we look at protein in the urine when we are screening these
women, and sometimes these metrics do not predict the outcome.
There is simply no test available to tell a clinician that a woman has
preeclampsia. There is also no test to predict how that preeclampsia will
progress. This means there is no test to tell a clinician or a midwife when to
deliver that baby. AI PREMie, our prototype test, will hopefully be able to not
only diagnose preeclampsia but also predict the future in a sense and tell the
clinician the best time to deliver that baby - because every day in utero for that
baby counts.
Are you hopeful that with continued innovation
within the artificial intelligence space, we will
see more clinical practices turning to this
technology to help aid healthcare? What would
this mean for global health?
The field of AI is moving so fast, and healthcare is trying to keep up with it. I do
see a future where our healthcare information will be available to us much like
our banking information is: securely, maybe even on our mobile phones, and
that way, we can move global health to treat disease to a status where we
predict disease and prevent disease.
Thought Leaders

Image Credit: Chompoo Suriyo/Shutterstock.com
Do you believe that AI_PREMie could also be
applied to other clinical diagnoses? What
further research would need to be carried out
before this could be possible?
The patented biomarkers underlying AI PREMie are derived from the
information stored within the platelet of sick, pregnant women, and we have
studied that information or that ‘cargo’ stored within the platelet. We know that
this is a marker – a form of a barcode - of the health status of an individual. In
our lab, we are currently looking at this cargo in other diseases involving
inflammation and vascular dysfunction concerning the platelet. Right now, we
have projects ongoing on multiple sclerosis, cancer-associated thrombosis, and
also COVID-19 to look to see if we can find new biomarkers in the platelets for
these diseases.
Thought Leaders

Are there any particular areas where you are
excited to see AI incorporated within the life
sciences sector?
We have shown in our project that incorporating AI into data-driven life
sciences projects has the potential to be truly transformative. If you look at
what is available now, eye diseases can be detected using neural networks of
three-dimensional retinal scans, but also in critical care, there are now sepsis
warnings based on AI, which has dramatically reduced the number of deaths
from sepsis in these hospitals. The potential is just so exciting.
Image Credit: elenabsl/Shutterstock.com
What's next for you and the ConwaySPHERE
research group?
Next year, excitingly, we are planning to take AI PREMie across Ireland - so we
want to increase the recruitment and data collection across Ireland and grow
the group even more.
Websites:
Thought Leaders

AIPREMIE – AI_PREMie is using Artificial Intelligence to ‘disrupt’ diagnostic
practices in preeclampsia and save lives of mothers and their newborn
babies.
https://pulse.microsoft.com/en-ie/transform-en-ie/na/fa1-game-changer-
ai-tool-will-save-mothers-and-babies/
https://www.ucd.ie/research/impact/casestudies/aipremiesavinglivesofmo
thersandbabiesusingai/
https://www.ucd.ie/discovery/aihealthcarehub/news/
https://www.ucd.ie/conwaysphere/
Twitter: @maguirepatr @AIPREMie #AI_PREMie
Instagram: AI_PREMie
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/patricia-maguire-UCD
About Professor Patricia Maguire
Patricia Maguire is an interdisciplinary scientist and inventor who is passionate
about the intersection of Artificial Intelligence with Biomedical Science. She is
Professor of Biochemistry at University College Dublin and Director of the UCD
Institute for Discovery. This institute recently launched the UCD AI Healthcare
hub (AIHH), with the ambition to transform healthcare at the individual to the
systemic level.
Patricia's own research is focused on platelets and
extracellular vesicles in several inflammatory diseases
including preeclampsia, multiple sclerosis, arterial and
venous thrombosis, cancer-associated thrombosis and
covid19. She has published widely including the journals
Nature Communications, Proceedings of the National
Academy of the Sciences, Proteomics, and Blood.
Through her unique expertise, she has developed a
bespoke diagnostics platform PALADIN (PlAteLet bAsed DIagNostics) that
combines the power of platelets in blood to sense their environment with
advanced omics technologies and Artificial Intelligence to uncover secrets of
health and disease.
Thought Leaders

Patricia has used PALADIN to uncover patented diagnostics that can diagnose
preeclampsia in sick pregnant women; the multi award-winning AI_PREMie
project. She also has a pipeline of potential new disruptive diagnostics from
other projects in her lab. She collaborates with industry across multiple sectors
including Bayer AG, Sanofi, Mallinckrodt pharmaceuticals, Microsoft, Google and
SAS.
Patricia is an advocate and mentor of women in STEM. In 2018, she won a UCD
Values in Action award for her work in Equality, Diversity and Inclusion across
UCD and bringing the values of creativity, collegiality, and engagement to life.
She lives in Dublin, Ireland where she is married and is (a swim) Mum to three
teenage girls.
Thought Leaders

How Important is the European
Ecosystem to Life Sciences Research?
As part of our SLAS Europe 2022 coverage, we speak to Jan Lichtenberg, vice
president of SLAS, about the role Europe plays within life sciences research and
how a new European start-up can stand out in the sector.
about your role at the Society for Laboratory
Automation and Screening (SLAS)?
My name is Jan Lichtenburg, and I am currently the vice president of SLAS. I
have been involved with SLAS since its very beginning as an exhibitor,
contributor of scientific content, or a short course instructor.
I am an electrical and microtechnology engineer by training; I come from the
microfluidic side, but I live and work in the life science space. It is the
interdisciplinary atmosphere that SLAS brings to the table that has always been
fascinating to me. When I was asked two years ago to be part of the board of
directors of SLAS, I was honored. I served as a secretary for a year, the vice
president this year, and then will be president next year.
It is a great organization to be part of, because bringing the scientific
community and the vendor community together, is so important for our
industry. At the end of the day, the innovation that we want to accomplish only
happens if we have vendors and users on board.
Jul 7 2022
Jan Lichtenberg
CEO and Founder of InSphero
Vice President of SLAS

Alongside your role at SLAS, you are also the
CEO and Founder of InSphero, a company
helping to accelerate drug discovery and
further our understanding of disease. What
made you decide to start a company in this
space, and could you tell us about some of
InSphero's core values and missions?
We started InSphero with the idea to bring the human patient back into the
center of drug discovery and development. Currently, that is not the case:
Starting from a hypothesis the organizations identify their targets and take
them through the whole development chain. Finally, at the very last minute,
they begin working with patients.
From a safety perspective, this process makes sense. From an efficacy
perspective, it does not.
The human patient must be the beginning and the end of the drug discovery
process. This is what our organization is focusing on. We are rebuilding parts of
the human patient - tissues and organs - in a highly scalable fashion in the lab
to use them for safety and efficacy testing. We have liver tissues, heart muscle
tissue, brain tissue, pancreatic tissue, and even skin.

Introducing InSphero
Introducing InSphero

These human tissue models play relevant roles throughout the R&D process: to
see whether a drug works, whether there are off-target effects, or to address
safety concerns, all of which need to be mitigated early on. You can do this with
our technology in a highly predictable way in the lab.
Ultimately, this accelerates drug discovery. It also enables drug discovery for
some diseases that are not currently treated. We also hope to reduce animal
testing, as we not only get better at rebuilding the human in the lab but also
need for human in-models for testing modern drug modalities that are not
working correctly in the animal.
This is the mission that we started with. We wrote our business plan in 2008,
submitted it for the first business plan competitions in 2009, and then had
Novartis as the first customer in the same year. This was also when we left our
old jobs and started the company with three founders.
Our technology was mature coming out of the University of Zurich in
Switzerland and ETH. At the same time, there was a growing need in the
pharmaceutical industry for novel methodologies in this area.

Akura™ 96 Spheroid Microplate | All-in-one plates for spheroids a
Akura™ 96 Spheroid Microplate | All-in-one plates for spheroids a…
…

You participated in a panel session at SLAS EU
titled 'Perspective in the European Life Science
Ecosystem.' Can you tell us more about what
was discussed in this session and the
importance of highlighting Europe as a major
player within the life sciences community?
This was a great session, and I think it was also a good for the SLAS Europe
conference to embrace the specifics of the European market. It is not just a
copy of SLAS International in the US. We had a great panel of larger and
smaller start-up companies, as well as entrepreneurs that have successfully
sold their companies or even brought them to the stock exchange via an IPO.
The big question is: "What made you successful in the European ecosystem?".
It is important to assess what may be easier or more difficult here, and it was
interesting to hear this from the different groups.
We are also concerned with growing the company not solely within Europe but
also outside Europe: approximately 50% of the R&D market in the
pharmaceutical industry is in the US. Our organization cannot stay in Europe
alone; we need to take things international quickly.
This can also be seen when working with larger pharma companies; often, they
have their research centers in Basel, San Francisco, and Boston. It is crucial to
align the interest of these stakeholders. I think this is something that we have
all struggled with, and we all managed in different ways.
Europe is home to 43 of the World's top 100
universities for life sciences and publishes
roughly twice as many scientific articles as the
US. As well as this, what else makes Europe an
exciting place to be within the life sciences
community, and what more can be done
regarding investment to help continue its
development?
Firstly, I think the numbers speak for themselves, both in terms of scientific
quality and output – meaning that Europe is a great place for science. We see

this in terms of patents that are filed as well as in terms of articles that are
published. We also see this in terms of European labs' innovation. Commercial
mRNA vaccines, which were so important during the pandemic, are just one
example where Europe has excelled.
Now, at the same time, Europe remains a pretty fragmented environment. We
have a lot of states, cultures, and languages. We have a lot of different
regulations despite the encompassing European Union. We have a lot of
different funding systems for start-up companies. We have different tax
regulations. So, all things considered, it is a bit more challenging to navigate.
My company is based in Switzerland, technically within Europe but not part of
the European Union. This means that we have a different set of advantages and
disadvantages. We are very close to fantastic universities, the University of
Zurich, ETH, and the University of Basel, to name a few academic powerhouses.
We have some fantastic large pharmaceutical companies in Switzerland, which
are very strong in research, as well as many small innovators. So, this range
opens a lot of opportunities for interactions.
We have a good tax environment and flexible labor laws, which makes it easy
for small companies to hire because they know that they can also scale back if
necessary, which sometimes, unfortunately, is necessary for survival. There are
unique advantages if you can navigate them.
There are also disadvantages. In the early phase of a start-up, countries like
Switzerland do not provide non-dilutive funding. They support academic
projects that can help you innovate, but no direct financial support. This is,
therefore, a bit of a disadvantage for Swiss start-ups compared to others in
Europe.
Generally speaking, Europe as a whole has a bit of a translation problem from
science into technology and then into products and services. Americans tend to
be much better at bringing out the big guns when technology has proven its
usefulness and needs to be scaled up so that it can be introduced into the
market. Unfortunately, it is sometimes seen that American start-ups often
overtake European ones or that Europeans move over to the US to become
more successful there. I believe that is something that we need to revise.

Image Credit: sdecoret/Shutterstock.com
Biotechnology is a field with the potential to
revolutionize many sectors within the life
sciences, including diagnostics, agricultural
science, and drug discovery. Therefore, in
2018, the European bioeconomy strategy was
published to help 'speed up the progression
towards a European bioeconomy.' How
important is this strategy to European life
sciences companies such as InSphero, and
how can having a strategy in place help
strengthen Europe's place within science while
also contributing to the Paris Agreement and
the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?
The European bio-economy strategy is very much focused on natural resources
and on sustainable development goals, which is extremely valuable for the
European market. It is not considered a major game-changer for our particular
industry because the key goals are to make better use of natural resources,
tackle climate change, and generally be more sustainable as a society.
However, the implications are important for us as a company and are part of

our core values. Biotech is not a very green technology. You use a lot of water
as well as energy to filter air and run air condition your systems. We have a lot
of waste because we rely so much on products that can only be used once. So,
these are aspects that enables us to contribute to SDGs.
For example, we are currently addressing measures to reduce CO emissions by
reducing animal testing. Animal testing produces a great amount of CO and
requires a lot of water. Each of the cages in a rodent facility has its own
conditioned air supply, for instance. So, by moving to in vitro testing, we can
make a meaningful contribution to reducing CO emissions.
I think there are a lot of technologies, like CRISPR, which can have a significant
impact on food supply, as well as a reduction in the use of pesticides and water
if you have a crop that is optimized for a specific climate. This is not an area in
which we can be particularly helpful as InSphero, but we can make our
contributions by being more sustainable in how we act every day.
As our world is fast-evolving with scientific
advancements being made at great speeds, we
are seeing many innovative new start-up
companies emerging, especially within Europe.
What are some of the challenges new
businesses need to consider when starting in
Europe, and what advice would you give to a
new start-up looking to leverage the European
ecosystem to help build their global business?
The main start-up challenges today are the same as they were ten years ago:
for instance, considering access to funding. However, students – particularly
postdocs that are ready to take their technology into a spinoff - are so much
better educated in entrepreneurship today than we were 15 years ago. The way
they present the business plans, and their whole entrepreneurial acumen, is
amazing. I think a lot has improved.
However, it also makes the competition for funding and the competition in the
market more difficult, which I believe is a good thing: almost a survival-of-the-
fittest situation. The most relevant risk for every start-up company is to develop
something that nobody needs. We all love the science we are carrying out in the
lab and want to take it to the market. We believe that other people will see the
2
2
2

same beauty in it and will also use it, but that is not necessarily the case.
Often, we come across groundbreaking technology looking for an application,
which is not how things should be. The need should exist first, and then a
solution should be developed to fulfill it.Organizations that operate like that are
the most successful start-ups.
Image Credit: InSphero
When starting a new business in the
biomedical and life sciences sector, you often
compete against well-established
pharmaceutical companies. How can a new
European company stand out from pharma
companies and create its own space in the
market?
The 'war for talents' is definitely fierce. A start-up, typically, cannot compete on
pay or fringe benefits. You can compete, however, in terms of purpose and
ownership in the company. The purpose is something that we see is becoming
so much more relevant for the younger folks that start in our company. The
younger generation is well-educated, but they want to understand why they
come to work every morning, what they can contribute and how their
contribution fits into the bigger scheme of things.
A smaller company can be better at finding its mission and purpose than a large
company because they are less dependent on published quarterly KPIs and
investor needs. Many people are driven to join companies like ours because
they like the purpose and can play a more significant role in a smaller system.

This means that they take on more responsibilities earlier on. They are not
simply fulfilling a small task in a bigger process but instead actually having to
take things from the lab to the customer.
That is extremely exciting for employees. We see people moving from big
pharma to companies like ours because they want to start afresh. To us, this is
great because it adds diversity to the company. This means that we have
different age groups, which definitely helps to add life to our approach.
Image Credit: Andrii Yalanskyi/Shutterstock.com
The COVID-19 pandemic has taught us many
lessons, especially the importance of
communication and collaboration. How
important do you believe these skills are for
the success of life sciences companies? How
does having good communication skills not
only benefit future partnerships but customer
relationships also?

Communication - being able to tell your story – is essential, but we also think
that being able to listen to what the other side says is super important. When
discussing communication skills, we often talk about 'sending', speaking, or
directly communicating to an employee. Instead, when we talk to customers,
we primarily want to listen – which is not always easy because we are not used
to this. Listening to what customers are working on, what their needs are,
listening to both the issues they have solved and the issues they have not
solved. That sometimes requires us to dial back in our need to send all the
time.
During the pandemic, we had many virtual meetings, but we lost the scientific
debate, the disagreement, and the challenge on certain things. The intersection
of debate is where science gets better: you present your research, and people
challenge you, and you defend yourself, or you get some great ideas, but both
sides learn, and both sides leave the conversation with a gain.
That is something that I have not really seen a lot in virtual meetings because it
is easy to just listen to a presentation. The drawback is that you do not engage
in the discussion, which is a problem.
We are also seeing smaller European countries
receive increased attention within the life
sciences. How can European nations work
together to support smaller regions and
countries to become established powers in the
field of life sciences?
In my opinion, this collaboration already works extremely well, particularly
when you consider countries like Denmark and Austria.
I think the European research funding landscape helps empower these small
countries to participate in bigger networks. That is extremely important. Large
countries, like Germany, France, and the Netherlands, have their national
funding schemes, which is great. True innovation happens if you bring together
different European countries and have an excellent geographic balance. It is
essential to have a good balance between small players and large players. The
European Union makes that collaboration a prerequisite, which is essential, and
receiving funding is vital to help these smaller countries stay in the game.

What do you believe the future of life sciences
research in Europe to look like? Are you
hopeful that we will see Europe becoming
more prominent in breakthrough discoveries
with continued innovation, funding, and
collaboration between companies?
I have a very positive outlook on the future of European life sciences. I think,
first of all, we remain a highly science-based and fact-focused part of the world.
This is not true for every leading global country: in some, there may be a
concern - and even a growing disrespect for – science, which is a big problem.
Though it happens also on the fringes of Europe, it does seem to be mostly
under control.
Efforts like the European Investment Council not only support science but also
help to bridge the funding gap: allowing companies to stand on their own feet
before they are ready to be investible for larger investment funds. I think that
is a good move. It is also great to see American investors and investors from
Asia taking more interest in European companies and establishing offices to
invest in them. There are a lot of moving parts that are driving this in the right
direction.

Image Credit: watchara/Shutterstock.com
Are there any particular fields within the life
sciences you are particularly excited to watch
evolve over the coming years? What should
people be watching out for?
There are three main trends. The first of these is precision medicine – otherwise
known as personalized medicine. It is essential to get a better understanding of
patient diversity and the fact that patients react differently to different
diseases, as well as to different medications.
It is essential to better understand which drug works for a patient and which
does not. I anticipate that we will see a great deal of innovation in that space,
which will drive drug discovery and application into a whole new area.
The second important aspect is gene editing, both as a research and
therapeutic tool. I fully support great technology, but we need to invest into

engaging with the end-user about the concerns that they about gene editing. If
we are successful, this can be a powerful tool: not just in medical and
therapeutic applications but also in the arena of natural resources, food supply,
and so on.
The last aspect is big data and artificial intelligence. A lot of the technologies
that we develop create big data sets. We work a lot with imaging and next-gen
sequencing. If you do not have the bioinformatics tools to help you condense
that information into a nucleus that allows you to make a decision, all that
information is worthless. Bringing that all together is fantastic.
Image Credit: InSphero
About Jan Lichtenberg
Jan Lichtenberg, Ph.D., is Co-Founder and CEO of Swiss- and US-based
InSphero Inc., the largest biotech specialized in 3D cell-culture technologies for
discovery and safety. InSphero’s patented assay-ready 3D microtissues mimic
the structure and functionality of organ tissue, e.g. liver, pancreas, or tumors
including disease states like diabetes or NASH. The 3D microtissues allow for
more predictive and reliable compound profiling for discovery and safety testing

in a highly robust, rapid and cost-efficient way.
Jan co-founded InSphero in 2009 and grew the company
to 65 employees in Switzerland and the US while
expanding the business to encompass all top 15 global
pharmaceutical companies. Prior to InSphero, Jan had VP
R&D and Product Management positions at Hocoma AG
(medical robotics) and Uwatec (microelectronics). He
holds a Ph.D. from the University of Neuchâtel and
managed a research group at the Swiss Federal Institute
of Technology (ETH), Zurich. Since 2021 he is a Board
Member of the Society of Laboratory Science and Screening (SLAS).
About InSphero
InSphero is the pioneer of industrial-grade, 3D-cell-based assay solutions and
scaffold-free 3D organ-on-a-chip technology. Through partnerships, InSphero
supports pharmaceutical and biotechnology researchers in successful decision-
making by accurately rebuilding the human physiology in vitro. Its robust and
precisely engineered suite of 3D InSight™ human tissue platforms are used by
major pharmaceutical companies worldwide to increase efficiency in drug
discovery and safety testing.
The company specializes in liver toxicology, metabolic diseases (e.g., T1 & T2
diabetes and NAFLD & NASH liver disease), and oncology (with a focus on
immuno-oncology and PDX models). The scalable Akura™ technology
underlying the company’s 3D InSight™ Discovery and Safety Platforms includes
96 and 384-well plate formats and the Akura™ Flow organ-on-a-chip system to
drive efficient innovation throughout all phases of drug development.
Sponsored Content Policy: AZoLifeSciences publishes articles and related
AZoLifeSciences which is to educate and inform site visitors interested in life
science news and information.

Diversifying STEM; the Importance of
Representation, Equity, and Inclusion
Please can you introduce yourself, and tell us
about your background in biophysics,
neuroscience, and biomedical data science?
My name is Paula Petrone, and I am Argentine. I first studied physics, and then
my career path turned to biophysics and the life sciences. For about ten years, I
have been largely dedicated to biomedical data science, which is a field I love.
Every day is different and each project offers a variety of challenges and
opportunities to learn. During the influx of COVID, I started my own startup in
biomedical data analytics, and I also started my own academic lab at ISGlobal.
In my lab, we have several projects which address different biomedical
problems such as COVID, malaria, Chagas, and mental health, dealing with
different biomedical data, including imaging.
During SLAS Europe 2022 you are participating
in a special session titled ‘Diversity, Equity,
and Inclusion’. Can you give us a preview of
what viewers should expect from this talk?
We are trying to discuss - and bring awareness to – the issue of inclusion in the
workplace. We think it is a very important topic, particularly at this conference.
Essentially, we want to make people think about their work-life balance and the
Jul 13 2022
As part of our SLAS Europe 2022 coverage, we speak to Paula Petrone,
Associate Research Professor at ISGlobal, about the importance of
representation, inclusion, and equity in the STEM fields.
ought Leaders
Paula Petrone
Associate Research Professor at ISGlobal
Organization Abc
Thought Leaders

inclusion of different genders and backgrounds. I think that is very important. I
am very proud of the organizers for having that session and that panel.
Image Credit: Angelina Bambina/Shutterstock
What does each part of diversity, equity, and
inclusion in the sciences look like to you
personally?
I work in STEM, which encompasses data analytics, mathematics, and physics.
Unfortunately, we do not get to see a lot of women in these careers. I also
dedicate time to mentoring and influencing women in starting and ultimately
leading in these careers because it is very important that we have that gender
perspective in data science and STEM. That diversity in the workplace is
important because we get to analyze data from a different viewpoint and
interpret results diversely.
When we are talking about medicine, women are usually ignored in datasets.
When you think about capturing data at the hospital, we hardly ever capture
things like menopause or menstrual periods, so that is an area in which I think
women can really contribute, particularly to the type of questions that we ask
Thought Leaders

and the way that we analyze the data, as well as the decision-making that we
do.
According to the United States Census Bureau,
27% of the STEM workforce in 2019 were
women, an increase of 19% since 1970. Why is
it important that we continue to encourage
diversity in the STEM fields?
First and foremost, it is important to note that 27% is not that much, especially
when you think that today, many STEM university careers are increasing the
number of female students, reaching 50% in some programs. The question is,
then, what happens after education: where does the inequality come from?
One of the main things I think about is the coincidence between one of the
most productive stages of a woman’s career and their reproductive cycle:
women between the ages of 30 to 40 are often in a stage when they get to
learn a lot and escalate in the leadership ladder, but it might also coincide with
a time when many women think about beginning a family and often need or
want to take time off work. This means that there can be challenges for women
who want to progress in both.
The other reason I think women are often denied leadership roles is the
prevalence of gendered stereotypes and how that impacts workplace roles.
From the time we are children, women are encouraged not to misbehave and to
be obedient in every aspect of our lives.
This means that ambition and a healthy drive to succeed professionally can be
misconstrued by society or interpreted negatively – which can detrimentally
impact how women progress.
Traits like this are essential for anyone to succeed in a leadership position – so
it is important that we create an environment that fosters and influences female
behavior to allow women to obtain those higher up-positions. To be a game-
changer, sticking to the status quo is not always productive.
Thought Leaders

Image Credit: Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock
Why do you believe there is ongoing under-
representation and inequity in STEM subjects
during higher education, as well as for
individuals wanting to enter the STEM
workforce?
This can be answered in two halves. The first half is the absence of role models
for many women. Science – specifically, leadership in STEM careers - is
dominated by white men. This means that many people do not get to see
themselves represented in this area.
The more women that we see in leadership positions, the better the diversity of
leadership roles will be for the new generations to come. That is why, in
Barcelona, where I live, I am an organizer for the Barcelona chapter of Women
in Data Science, an annual conference for women in data science and STEM
careers. Women in Data Science or WiDS is a conference that aims to inspire,
educate and support women in data science all over the world. Organized for
the first time by Stanford University in 2015, it turned into a worldwide
conference in more than 60 countries.
Thought Leaders

The other part is inclusive job positions. What happens is that usually, people
advertise for jobs using non-inclusive language. That is a problem because
research shows that women do not tend to want to apply for positions that
request ‘proficiency’ in this topic or ‘high expertise’ in other topics. Historically,
women are inclined to apply for jobs that emphasize ‘nurture,’ ‘cultural
development,’ ‘personal developments,’ ‘work-life balance’ and ‘opportunities to
learn.’
This can be attributed to the fact that, as I said, women have not, by tradition,
been encouraged to be ambitious or to think that they can do everything. This
means that those people tend to have a lower level of self-confidence when it
comes to applying for a job.
Positions that actively encourage women to apply - even explicitly in the text –
are a good step to increasing the diversity and the gender balance in many
STEM workplaces.
How do you believe society can improve the
inclusivity and representation of marginalized
groups in STEM, and what can we do to further
diversify the sciences as a whole?
I think it is essential to have the conversation in a balanced way. There is a
prevalent culture now – termed ‘cancel’ culture – which means that when there
is a great deal of discourse about something, people become tired of it and
begin to reject the topic.
Inclusion and diversity also include the important aspects of men wanting to
have work-life balance and be present at home, particularly when it comes to
child-rearing. It is important to have a new gender-neutral conversation that is
not just focused on women and different ethnic groups but also focuses on men
and their role in the workplace as a whole. Having a well-balanced conversation
where everybody is included is the path to improving inclusion and diversity.
Thought Leaders

There have been enormous breakthroughs in
the life sciences in the last decade. How do you
believe technology has transformed research
in the life sciences during this time, and in
what areas do you believe the biggest
advances have been?
My field is in data science and artificial intelligence, so I will focus primarily on
the promise of AI in the life sciences. There is a huge amount of opportunity,
but at the same time, we have to also consider that these technologies are a
little over-hyped. I am not sure that the public actually knows the limitations of
AI in the life sciences - we tend to perceive that computers think by
themselves.
There are a lot of unsolved challenges, and I think there is a gap between what
we develop in the academic sector and what is actually deployed at the clinic or
in the industry sector. This means that there is a gap in our research and a
disparity as to how that research is translated into technology. I think there is a
lot we have to do. The potential is huge, but also we have to manage our
expectations and be realistic as to what we can do and what we will do.
Thought Leaders

Image Credit: Jasen Wright/Shutterstock
Do you believe there are any limitations to the
use of technology in the life sciences? How can
we combat these challenges?
AI and data science at this moment in time is very well developed. The
algorithms that we have and that we are working on are very much advanced,
but the huge challenge comes from the availability of data. This is something
that people do not discuss enough. Data access and data generation is huge,
but the quality of data and data access is not always at hand.
I think when we want to develop algorithms on patient data or clinical data, we
do not usually have very good data sets. Companies now realize that they have
to keep their data in good condition. So, my advice to companies and startups
is that they should really work on how they will acquire the data and how they
share that data.
Looking ahead, are there any areas of
technology you’re excited to see excel in the
next ten years?
When it comes to the topic of AI and deep learning, my particular area of
interest is focused on biomedical imaging. I think that there are a lot of images
out there that come from patients from microscopy. In my lab, for instance, we
are developing a very strong line of research to analyze and get the best out of
these imaging data.
What’s next for you? Are you currently
involved in any exciting upcoming projects?
There are several projects at the lab which are related to the analysis of images
to understand why we age. We are looking at stem cells with microscopy and
understanding the differences between young cells and old cells to really
understand how we can reverse the aging process in the lab.
We are also working with neglected diseases, like malaria and Chagas. I think
there is a huge opportunity in the academic sector to work on these largely
Thought Leaders

forgotten diseases of the developing world.
What are you excited about for SLAS? What
are you looking forward to most about the next
couple of days?
I am very excited about meeting people, sharing ideas, and making new
connections. This is one of the first conferences I have attended after the
pandemic. I am really excited. It feels like coming back to life after recovering
from these two years.
My academic profile: https://www.isglobal.org/our-team/-/profiles/27001
My academic group: https://www.isglobal.org/en/biomedical-data-science
My company: https://www.phenobytelife.com/
Recent Interview: https://www.isglobal.org/en/-/paula-petrone-descub
rimientos-y-tecnologias-en-ciencia-de-datos-y-salud-digital-para-mejorar-
salud-a-corto-plazo
Linkedin Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paula-p-3981a41/
About Paula Petrone
Paula Petrone is Associate Professor at ISGlobal and leads the Biomedical Data
Science team whose focus is the development of algorithms applied to early
diagnosis, risk assessment and treatment of chronic diseases, mental health
and neurodegeneration, health informatics, wearable
health devices and medical imaging. She completed her
undergraduate degree in Physics at the Balseiro Institute
in Argentina. She holds a Ph.D. in Biophysics from
Stanford University.
Her field of expertise is data analytics at the intersection
of chemistry, biology and medicine, and machine
learning. As a postdoctoral researcher at Novartis NIBR,
and later as a senior data scientist at Roche, she has
developed several machine learning models applied to
drug discovery and high throughput screening.
Thought Leaders

Her postdoctoral work in neuroscience at the Barcelona Brain Research Center
combines imaging and machine learning to predict Alzheimer's disease before
the onset of cognitive impairment.
In recent years, she has served as a data science advisor for pharmaceutical
companies and biotech startups. In 2020, she founded the startup Phenobyte
Life Sciences specialized in the application of artificial intelligence in the biotech
and digital health sectors.
Co-ambassador of WiDS (Women in Data Science, Stanford, 2021-2022) for
Barcelona, Dr. Petrone is a strong advocate for diversity in STEM careers.
She is also engaged in raising public awareness about the opportunities and
limitations of applying AI and technology in healthcare. She is an author of
several scientific publications, speaker, mentor and mother of two children.
Thought Leaders

How can High-Content Screening
accelerate Drug Discovery?
As part of our SLAS Europe 2022 coverage, we speak to Professor Jeremy
Simpson from University College Dublin about his lab's cell biology research and
the role high-content screening can play in accelerating drug discovery.
what inspired your career into cell biology?
My name is Jeremy Simpson, and I am the Professor of Cell Biology at UCD. I
was probably inspired along the way by several really important mentors: for
instance, when I was doing my undergraduate degree, my mentor Professor
Mike Lord was inspirational, and one of the things he taught me at the time in
my undergraduate years was about the basic processes of how cells internalize
material.
The reason why I was very excited about that, at the time, is because Michael
Brown and Joseph Goldstein had just won the Nobel Prize for that work in the
mid-1980s: which, for a young student like myself, suddenly being able to see
that we can study cells and see how they take up materials was fascinating –
and I think that set me on the course of being a cell biologist.
Jul 6 2022
ought Leaders
Jeremy Simpson
Professor of Cell Biology
University College Dublin
Thought Leaders

Image Credit: Elpisterra/Shutterstock.com
At University College Dublin, your laboratory
utilizes high-throughput imaging technologies
in a variety of life sciences disciplines. Can you
describe some of the research that your lab is
involved with?
In a way, that follows from the previous answer - one of the things that we are
really interested in is how cells internalize materials, particularly how they
internalize nanomaterials. We see huge prospects in functionalizing these
nanomaterials in different ways to carry specific drugs and therapeutics.
As a cell biology and high throughput screening lab, we are trying to use the
technologies to truly understand - in a systematic and high throughput manner
- how all of these materials are brought into cells and where they are
distributed into cells. So, for us, the technology part is a critical piece: it is
bringing cell biology and technology together.
Thought Leaders

A large volume of your research is focused on
the application of high-content screening. Can
you tell us more about this technology and its
role in drug discovery?
What we are trying to do here is simply make the most of the fact that when
you look at a cell through the microscope, you can see all the different
compartments, and all the different proteins doing whatever they do. The
concept of high-content imaging and high-content screening is to use all that
information. When we capture the images in the microscope, rather than just
effectively saying, "Well, here's a nice picture, and this is what the cell looks
like," we use high-content imaging technology to turn that into quantitative
information. It can precisely describe what is going on in the cell in quantitative
terms.
Of course, that is very powerful because it means that when we tweak
something, change something a little bit, or for example internalize a different
nanomaterial, we can precisely measure changes that are going on inside the
cell. That is why I think this is a really exciting technology because, again, you
can see how it can be applied. For example, if we have different therapeutics or
drugs loaded onto different nanomaterials, we can assess how they interact
with cells and elicit their effects.
We probably could not have even conceived of some of the experiments that we
are doing now 10 or 15 years ago – partly because the technology was not
there to be able to do the things that we do now. For us as a cell biology lab, I
think it is essential to embrace the technology out there and use it to answer
important questions.
Thought Leaders

Image Credit: paulista/Shutterstock.com
What are some of the advantages of using
high-content screening for drug discovery
compared to other technologies available?
We are capturing images of cells, and we are trying to use those images to
answer specific biological questions. However, when you have the image, you
effectively have a source of data that you can go back to repeatedly, and you
can ask different questions. This means that one of the things we spend a lot of
time doing in my lab is reanalyzing data from experiments and screens we have
carried out in the past. You can extract different pieces of information by
applying different software tools and algorithms.
In a way, that is the beauty of the technology: when you have gone to all of the
trouble of creating the dataset and the images, it is not as though you harvest
one piece of information and that is that done - which is, in a way, maybe what
many of the other screening technologies are designed to do. With high-content
imaging, you can keep extracting information in very different ways, months or
even years, after doing those original experiments.
Given that imaging technology is costly, users want to maximize the amount of
information they get at the end.
Thought Leaders

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