Bringing new drugs to market is a costly, time-consuming endeavor. On top of that, most medicines fail at some point in the research and development phase. Sarah Guo is joined by Sajith Wickramasekara, co-founder and CEO of Benchling, a company that has not only become the central system of record for biotech R&D, but uses AI agents to assist scientists to help fix this broken system. Sajith details the roadblocks that impede drug development and approval, the “dot com” bust occurring in biotech, and how AI agents and simulation can help scientists experiment faster. Plus, they talk about China’s competitive rise in the pharma space, and the unique challenges of building an interdisciplinary culture that merges the worlds of science and software.
Rebuild biotech for the AI era - Sajith Wickramasekara
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Chapters:
00:00 – Sajith Wickramasekara Introduction
00:38 – Origin and Mission of Benchling
02:08 – The Drug Development Process
03:49 – Current State of the Biotech industry
08:46 – AI’s Role in Biotech
16:14 – Benchling AI and Its Impact
18:36 – The Future of AI in Biotech
26:28 – Debunking AI Drug Discovery Myths
28:50 – Data’s Role in Biotech
29:35 – The Importance of Tools in Pharma
31:28 – AI’s Impact on Scientific Research
34:55 – Building a Biotech Company
40:18 – Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Biotech
43:06 – Tech and Biotech: Learning from Each Other
48:16 – Conclusion
