Close Menu
Edu Expertise Hub
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram
    Saturday, July 5
    • About us
    • Contact
    • Submit Coupon
    Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram YouTube
    Edu Expertise Hub
    • Home
    • Udemy Coupons
    • Best Online Courses and Software Tools
      • Business & Investment
      • Computers & Internet
      • eBusiness and eMarketing
    • Reviews
    • Jobs
    • Latest News
    • Blog
    • Videos
    Edu Expertise Hub
    Home » Latest News » Big data and Google BigQuery improve cancer drug development by detecting bacteria
    Latest News

    Big data and Google BigQuery improve cancer drug development by detecting bacteria

    TeamBy TeamDecember 23, 2024No Comments6 Mins Read0 Views
    Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Telegram Tumblr Email
    Big data and Google BigQuery improve cancer drug development by detecting bacteria
    Share
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Pinterest Email


    Developing new drugs is risky and expensive. Creating a new drug and bringing it to clinical trials can cost billions of pounds, with no guarantees of success. And sometimes a drug can fail to meet expectations during a clinical trial in one part of the world, even though it was effective in another.

    One reason is the bacteria in the human body. Each person has a slightly different mix of bacteria in their bodies, and these bacteria are now known to play an important role in how well a medicine works – or even if it works at all.

    Understanding that relationship is all the more important in cancer treatment, where bacteria in the tumour risk blocking potentially life-saving treatments.

    The relationship between drugs and treatments is extremely complex and hard to predict. But with a new drug, or “asset”, costing as much as $2.6bn to develop, being able to model that relationship is hugely important to both pharmaceutical researchers and clinicians.

    BioCortex is a specialist research company, set up to use advanced data science techniques to analyse the relationship between bacteria and drug candidates, with an initial focus on oncology and, in particular, antibody-drug conjugates.

    By better understanding how bacteria interfere with medicines, BioCorteX, and the drugs researchers it works with, aim to increase the success rate of drugs going through clinical trials. This should lead to shorter drug development cycles and more effective treatments for patients.

    “One of the reasons we founded the company was the frustration that, when you look after people as a clinician, you spot that people respond very, very differently to treatments, and often it’s difficult to understand why,” says BioCorteX co-founder Nik Sharma. “We saw an opportunity for a stepwise change in how we think about drugs and pharmaceuticals. Bacteria, which are really integral to human health, actually underact with pharmaceuticals. We think that is one of the core reasons why drugs may work in an individual, but at a larger scale may fail.”

    Clinical trials

    In clinical trials, a drug might be successful in one geography or population group but fail in another due to different bacteria in the human body.

    Better understanding that relationship, with the vast number of variables involved – both the human body’s bacteria and the number of drugs being tested – is, though, a vast mathematical challenge. “The amount of bacteria that we have is phenomenal,” says Sharma. “The amount of pharmaceutical [treatments] is obviously large. The complexity is huge.

    Sharma and Mo Alomari, a Rolls-Royce engineer at the time, worked together on finding a solution. Alomari was working on ways to model systems with extremely large numbers of variables.

    This offered a way to look at bacteria and drug interaction, and Sharma and Alomari went on to cofound BioCorteX. The idea was to test these interactions “in silico”, or on computer hardware.

    To do this, the firm built one of the largest knowledge graphs in biology. Modelling the interaction between bacteria and a drug candidate involves 15 to 16 billion connections.

    This was beyond the reach of any commercial off-the-shelf database or analytics tool. So, BioCorteX builds its own, using Google’s BigQuery. “There is no software out there that can handle the knowledge graph of that size that we’ve been able to find, and we’ve looked at all commercial offerings out there,” says Sharma.

    “What we’ve done is build our knowledge graph using BigQuery, and that’s what really allowed us to scale and, importantly, work economically, and issue new versions of our knowledge graph and merge those data two or three times a day.”

    Knowledge graph

    The knowledge graph has some three billion notes and 16 billion edges, all stored on BigQuery.

    “On the graph databases, there are a number of them out there,” says Alomari. “Not one of them is able to handle the billions of nodes. So, basically, we came up with a bespoke solution built on top of BigQuery, where we added the layer on top that basically treats BigQuery as a graph database.”

    If a scientist wants to run new data through the system, BioCorteX can do this several times a day at minimal cost. “It takes approximately 20 minutes,” says Sharma.

    BioCorteX takes data from pharmaceutical companies and runs it through the knowledge graph to identify possible bacterial interference in a drug, and how it might impact its effectiveness in a larger number of patients.

    “The bacteria makes some drugs for some individuals incompatible, whereas they’re compatible for others,” says Sharma. “We can determine that interaction. We can determine what is compatible at scale. So, the product is really the ability to be able to look at those assets fast forward.”

    The process is quicker, and of course cheaper, than a clinical trial. Nor is the BioCorteX’s analysis limited to new drugs.

    “What we’re also able to do is look at assets that haven’t been successful,” says Sharma. “You would have seen that a number of studies fail. Those drugs are often what’s called ‘out licensed’, so another company will take them on and see whether they can develop them. We’re able to look at those assets and see whether they failed because of the hidden interaction between the bacteria, the tumour and the drug.”

    This type of modelling is becoming more important as the development of medicines becomes more international. By using vast amounts of data, BioCorteX can run scenarios to model, say, a phase one study in Australia and then the differences between a phase two study in the US and Europe.

    Nor is BioCorteX’s technology limited to cancer treatment. Although the current focus is on oncology, and bacteria, the approach is already being used to study viruses and fungi. “The engines are applicable across different verticals; we’ve done some work in consumer health,” says Sharma.

    “What we’re able to do is provide further insights,” he says. “This isn’t a choice. A pharmaceutical company or a drug company doesn’t have a choice of whether this interaction is occurring – it’s happening.

    “So, they can either choose to understand it, or they can do what they’re doing now with a 96% failure rate. In the future, we hope we can offer the right drug, first time, for all.”

    This post is exclusively published on eduexpertisehub.com

    Source link

    Share. Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email
    Team

      Related Posts

      From the FBI to F&A: lessons learnt in safeguarding systems and data

      July 5, 2025

      Supreme Court Ruling Highlights Continued Power Struggle Over LGBTQ+ Books in Schools

      July 5, 2025

      10 (and counting…) Google goodies for your classroom

      July 4, 2025

      Air France-KLM to increase intelligence of bots that have saved 200,000 hours

      July 4, 2025

      Large Public Libraries Give Young Adults Across U.S. Access to Banned Books

      July 3, 2025

      5 strategies to get your students talking

      July 3, 2025
      Courses and Software Tools

      Extreme Privacy: What It Takes to Disappear

      August 24, 202454 Views

      Modern C++ Programming Cookbook: Master Modern C++ with comprehensive solutions for C++23 and all previous standards

      September 18, 202427 Views

      Meebook E-Reader M7 | 6.8′ Eink Carta Screen | 300PPI Smart Light | Android 11 | Ouad Core Processor | Out Speaker | Support Google Play Store | 3GB+32GB Storage | Micro-SD Slot | Gray

      August 19, 202422 Views

      HR from the Outside In: Six Competencies for the Future of Human Resources

      May 20, 202517 Views

      Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming

      April 19, 202516 Views
      Reviews

      Fundraising For Creators With Cryptocurrency Crowdfunding | Udemy Coupons 2025

      July 5, 2025

      Software Development Engineer – FBDA, Fire TV Channels, FBDA Video Ads

      July 5, 2025

      C# 12 and .NET 8 – Modern Cross-Platform Development Fundamentals: Start building websites and services with ASP.NET Core 8, Blazor, and EF Core 8

      July 5, 2025

      Options Trading Simplified For Beginners: Master The Essential Options Skills For Generational Wealth Even With A Small Account

      July 5, 2025

      The Anywhere Operating System: How to lead a team and run your business from anywhere

      July 5, 2025
      Stay In Touch
      • Facebook
      • YouTube
      • TikTok
      • WhatsApp
      • Twitter
      • Instagram
      Latest News

      From the FBI to F&A: lessons learnt in safeguarding systems and data

      July 5, 2025

      Supreme Court Ruling Highlights Continued Power Struggle Over LGBTQ+ Books in Schools

      July 5, 2025

      10 (and counting…) Google goodies for your classroom

      July 4, 2025

      Air France-KLM to increase intelligence of bots that have saved 200,000 hours

      July 4, 2025

      Large Public Libraries Give Young Adults Across U.S. Access to Banned Books

      July 3, 2025
      Latest Videos

      What is Digital Marketing? Scope, Earnings & Who Can Start a Career in It Hammad’s Digital Hub

      July 5, 2025

      Just trend #gacha #memecreator #gachaclub #gcmeme #gachalife #trend #gachememe #edit #memes

      July 4, 2025

      Kenley Jansen notches his 1,000th career MLB strikeout | August 25, 2021 | Dodgers @ Padres

      July 3, 2025

      Top 5 Cyber Security Jobs in India || Cyber Security Career 2024

      July 2, 2025

      Navigate Your Marketing Career with Expert Mentorship | NIMS Academy Success Guide

      July 1, 2025
      Latest Jobs

      Software Development Engineer – FBDA, Fire TV Channels, FBDA Video Ads

      July 5, 2025

      Youth Programs – Dance Class Instructor

      July 5, 2025

      Part Time Educator (South River, NJ)

      July 5, 2025

      Occupational Therapist – Full, Part Time & PRN Skilled Nursing Community

      July 5, 2025

      Lease Servicing Specialist II

      July 5, 2025
      Legal
      • Home
      • Privacy Policy
      • Cookie Policy
      • Terms and Conditions
      • Disclaimer
      • Affiliate Disclosure
      • Amazon Affiliate Disclaimer
      Latest Udemy Coupons

      Mastering Maxon Cinema 4D 2024: Complete Tutorial Series | Udemy Coupons 2025

      August 22, 202435 Views

      Advanced Program in Human Resources Management | Udemy Coupons 2025

      April 5, 202531 Views

      Diploma in Aviation, Airlines, Air Transportation & Airports | Udemy Coupons 2025

      March 21, 202530 Views

      Python Development & Data Science: Variables and Data Types | Udemy Coupons 2025

      May 24, 202521 Views

      Time Management and Timeboxing in Business, Projects, Agile | Udemy Coupons 2025

      April 2, 202521 Views
      Blog

      3 Ways To Network Over Summer Vacation And Grow Your Career

      July 3, 2025

      Why Community Is Your Most Valuable Career Asset In 2025

      June 28, 2025

      What Employers Are Really Looking For In Job Interviews

      June 27, 2025

      The Best Way to End a Cover Letter (With 4 Winning Examples)

      June 26, 2025

      5 Job Interview Secrets To Beat The Competition

      June 25, 2025
      Facebook X (Twitter) Instagram Pinterest YouTube Dribbble
      © 2025 All rights reserved!

      Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.

      We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. By clicking “Accept”, you consent to the use of ALL the cookies.
      .
      SettingsAccept
      Privacy & Cookies Policy

      Privacy Overview

      This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
      Necessary
      Always Enabled
      Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
      Non-necessary
      Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
      SAVE & ACCEPT