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Your guide to AI December 6 2020, · Issue #48 · View online from Nathan Benaich
Monthly analysis of AI technology, geopolitics, research, and startups.
Dear readers,
Welcome to the November 2020 issue of my newsletter, Your guide to AI. Here you’ll find an analytical narrative covering key developments in AI tech, geopolitics, health/bio, startups, research, and blogs.
If you enjoyed the read, I’d appreciate you hitting forward to a couple of friends.
I’d love to hear about what you’re working on and/or your feedback on the issue, just hit reply!
Wishing you the best for the holidays,
Nathan Benaich
These past weeks have been a positive whirlwind for the biotechnology industry and global public health. First, we had the rapid approvals of COVID-19 vaccines, both using mRNA technology (Moderna, BioNTech) and more traditional methods (Oxford). While this news wasn’t (from what I can tell) driven by AI-based designs or workflows, another news item was: Baricitinib. This drug, which was postulated in February this year by London-based Benevolent.ai as a potential treatment for patients suffering from COVID-19 was granted emergency authorization by the FDA. Patients can now receive immediate use of Baricitinib in combination with Remdesivir because patients who received this dual treatment suffered a 35% lower mortality rate than those taking Remdesivir alone. Moreover, pre-clinical experiments conducted at the University of Washington showed that computationally designed mini proteins that mimic how an antibody would bind the COVID-19 can prevent its interaction with the ACE-2 receptor. This early work shows a) that understanding 3D protein structure is key to elucidating function, and b) that computationally-driven search and optimization of protein structure can rapidly generate useful drug candidates. ... "
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