Owkin

Last updated
Owkin
Industry Biotechnology
FoundedAugust 3, 2016 (2016-08-03)
FounderThomas Clozel, Gilles Wainrib
Headquarters
Paris
,
France
Area served
US, France, UK, Switzerland, Germany, Spain
ProductsMSIntuit CRC, RlapsRisk BC
ServicesAI Drug Discovery, AI Drug Development, AI Diagnostics
Number of employees
350 (2023)
Website owkin.com

Owkin is an AI biotech company that uses artificial intelligence to identify new treatments, optimize clinical trials and develop AI diagnostics. [1] [2] The company uses federated learning, a type of privacy preserving technology, to access multimodal patient data from academic institutions and hospitals to train its AI models for drug discovery, development, and diagnostics. Owkin has collaborated with pharmaceutical companies around the world to improve their therapeutic programs. [3]

Contents

History

Owkin was founded in 2016, by Thomas Clozel, a clinical research doctor and son of Jean-Paul and Martine Clozel founders of Swiss biotech Actelion, and Gilles Wainrib, a professor of Artificial Intelligence. [4]

Owkin has raised over $255 million and became a ‘unicorn’ – a startup valued at more than $1 billion – in November 2021 through a $180 million investment from French biopharma company Sanofi. [5]

Technologies

Federated learning

Owkin uses federated learning, a decentralized machine learning technique, to train machine learning models with multiple data providers. [6] [7] [8] Federated learning allows data providers to collaborate without moving or sharing their data. [8] [7]

The MELLODDY project, an initiative that included Owkin, 10 pharmaceutical companies, and six other partners, applied federated learning to train AI on datasets without having to share proprietary data. [9] [8] [10] The aim was to improve drug discovery and they built a shared platform called MELLODDY (Machine Learning Ledger Orchestration for Drug Discovery). [9] [10] [8] The first results of the project were published in July 2022. [8]

Transfer learning

Transfer learning is a machine learning technique that allows a model pre-trained on one task to be used on another related task. [11] Owkin uses transfer learning to work on very small datasets. [11] Owkin's model (CHOWDER) is able to understand high-level graphic patterns, such as tumors, that are themselves relying on very low-level visual patterns, in order to fully learn the tumor's visual pattern. [12]

Products and Services

MSIntuit CRC

MSIntuit CRC is an AI-powered digital pre-screening diagnostic tool to improve colorectal cancer diagnosis and treatment. [13] It screens patients for microsatellite instability (MSI), which is a key genomic biomarker in colorectal cancer. [13] MSIntuit CRC is approved for use across the European Union. [14] It underwent a blind validation in 2023, made possibly partly by its availability within Medipath, the largest pathology lab network in France. [1]

Dx RlapsRisk BC

Dx RlapsRisk BC uses AI to predict if breast cancer patients will relapse within a few years of initial treatment. [14] It is used by pathologists and oncologists to help determine the right treatment pathway for breast cancer patients. [14]

Partnerships

Amgen

Owkin collaborated with Amgen to test the ability of AI to improve cardiovascular prediction. [3]

Sanofi

In November 2021 Owkin entered a strategic alliance with Sanofi. [15] The alliance included a $180 million equity investment, and a $90 million discovery and development partnership focused on Sanofi’s oncology efforts in four different cancers. [16] Sanofi used Owkin’s technology to find new biomarkers and therapeutic targets, build prognostic models, and predict response to treatment. [17]

Bristol-Myers Squibb

In June 2022, Owkin entered a strategic alliance with Bristol-Myers Squibb to help them design potentially more precise and efficient clinical trials. [17] The collaboration initially focused on cardiovascular disease, and has the potential to expand into projects in other therapeutic areas. [18]

MSD

In December 2023, Owkin entered a strategic alliance with MSD to develop and commercialize AI-powered digital pathology diagnostics for the EU market that could be used to identify patients suitable for immunotherapies. [19]

Servier

In October 2023, Owkin and Servier started a multi-year partnership focused on developing “better-targeted therapies” in oncology and other disease areas. [20] The partnership’s first two projects were in translational medicine and digital pathology. [20]

MOSAIC

MOSAIC (Multi Omic Spatial Atlas in Cancer) was formed by Owkin, Nanostring Technologies, the University of Pittsburgh, Gustave Roussy, Lausanne University Hospital, Uniklinikum Erlangen/Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, and Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin. [21] [22] It uses spatial omics, multimodal patient data, and artificial intelligence, and aims to “offer unprecedented information on the structure of tumors” and guide new treatments. [22] [21]

Publications

Owkin’s research on AI/ML has led to a number of publications that focus on machine learning methodologies and the development of predictive models for different disease areas, mainly oncology.

  1. Courtiol, Pierre et al. “Deep learning-based classification of mesothelioma improves prediction of patient outcome”, Nat Med 25, 1519–1525 (2019) [23]
  2. Schmauch, Benoît et al. “A deep learning model to predict RNA-Seq expression of tumours from whole slide images”, Nature Communications volume 11, Article number: 3877 (2020) [24]
  3. Jean Ogier du Terrail et al. “Federated learning for predicting histological response to neoadjuvant chemotherapy in triple-negative breast cancer" Nat Med (2023). 10.1038/s41591-022-02155 [25]
  4. Saiilard et al., “Pacpaint: a histology-based deep learning model uncovers the extensive intratumor molecular heterogeneity of pancreatic adenocarcinoma” Nat Commun 14, 3459 (2023) [26]
  5. Saillard et al., “Validation of MSIntuit as an AI-based pre-screening tool for MSI detection from colorectal cancer histology slides” Nature Communications 14, 6695 (2023) [27]
  6. Saillard et al., "Predicting Survival After Hepatocellular Carcinoma Resection Using Deep Learning on Histological Slides" Hepatology 72 (2020) [28]

Awards

Related Research Articles

Sanofi S.A. is a French multinational pharmaceutical and healthcare company headquartered in Paris, France. The corporation was established in 1973 and merged with Synthélabo in 1999 to form Sanofi-Synthélabo. In 2004, Sanofi-Synthélabo merged with Aventis and renamed to Sanofi-Aventis, which were each the product of several previous mergers. It changed its name back to Sanofi in May 2011. The company is a component of the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index. In 2023, the company’s seat in Forbes Global 2000 was 89.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amgen</span> American multinational biopharmaceutical company

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer</span> Autosomal dominant genetic condition associated with a high risk of cancer in the colon

Hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC) is a hereditary predisposition to colon cancer.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oxaliplatin</span> Pharmaceutical drug

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Regeneron Pharmaceuticals</span> American biotechnology company

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Panitumumab, sold under the brand name Vectibix, is a fully human monoclonal antibody specific to the epidermal growth factor receptor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsatellite instability</span> Condition of genetic hypermutability

Microsatellite instability (MSI) is the condition of genetic hypermutability that results from impaired DNA mismatch repair (MMR). The presence of MSI represents phenotypic evidence that MMR is not functioning normally.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">KRAS</span> Protein-coding gene in humans

KRAS is a gene that provides instructions for making a protein called K-Ras, a part of the RAS/MAPK pathway. The protein relays signals from outside the cell to the cell's nucleus. These signals instruct the cell to grow and divide (proliferate) or to mature and take on specialized functions (differentiate). It is called KRAS because it was first identified as a viral oncogene in the KirstenRAt Sarcoma virus. The oncogene identified was derived from a cellular genome, so KRAS, when found in a cellular genome, is called a proto-oncogene.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital pathology</span>

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References

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