IDEA Collider: Innovation & Asymmetric Learning in Pharma Biotech Innovations and AI in Drug Development with Alex Telford:
Sep 23, 2025
In a captivating discussion, Alex Telford, a biotech founder and co-founder of Convoke Bio, shares insights from his journey in drug development. He explores how AI and language models can revolutionize pharmaceutical workflows, tackling inefficiencies in clinical practices. Telford highlights the significance of data management and the role of emerging AI technologies in drug discovery. He also delves into China’s growing influence in biotech and the challenges of understanding neuroscience. Expect a thought-provoking conversation on the future of biopharma!
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From UCL To Convoke: The Origin Story
- Alex describes moving from UCL synthetic biology to consulting after feeling academic work was too toy-like and impractical.
- That consulting work exposed him to pharma's end-to-end process and glaring knowledge inefficiencies that inspired Convoke Bio.
Language Models Power Scalable Pharma Datasets
- Convoke uses language models to ingest and structure large volumes of public and internal pharma data into analyzable datasets.
- This enables new, large-scale quantitative reasoning about clinical results, patents, deals and more.
Bring Decisions Forward With Model Analysis
- Do integrate decision-making earlier by using model-aided analysis to evaluate multiple development paths and trade-offs.
- Use cheap, prompt-driven analyses to explore commercial, manufacturability and regulatory scenarios before locking a single TPP.
