Striking a Balance Between Technology and Biology in Computational Drug Discovery

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This chapter explores the strategic use of contractors and in-house talent for technical tasks in a computational drug discovery company, emphasizing the need for diverse expertise in areas like quantum computing and generative AI. It highlights the team structure and the application of computationally generated data in biology and drug discovery, including the use of AI for accelerating drug development processes. The conversation also delves into the challenges of understanding molecular interactions in drug discovery and the role of AI in optimizing drug discovery processes while balancing innovation and safety.

Proteins are nanomachines inside cells and perform the incredible array of tasks required for cells to function. They are composed of a chain of hundreds to thousands of amino acid “building blocks”. Peptides are similar to proteins, but have only about 3 to 30 amino acids. Their smaller size gives them distinct properties that are useful in therapeutic applications.

Menten AI is using cutting-edge generative methods to engineer new peptide therapeutics, and are backed by Y Combinator, Khosla Ventures, and others.

Patrick Finneran is the Associate Director of Biochemistry at Menten. He joins the show to tell us about the drug development process, handling noisy biological data, building a hybrid team of software engineers and biologists, and more.

Sean’s been an academic, startup founder, and Googler. He has published works covering a wide range of topics from information visualization to quantum computing. Currently, Sean is Head of Marketing and Developer Relations at Skyflow and host of the podcast Partially Redacted, a podcast about privacy and security engineering. You can connect with Sean on Twitter @seanfalconer .