This symposium covers examples of development of academic research in biomedical computational simulations into commercial opportunities. Presentation topics can include (but are not limited to) commercialisation of software, companies that use computation as an essential component in product design and/or development, or setting up expert consultancy services. Success stories, pitfalls, and practical considerations are all of great value to share with the community of biomedical computational simulations.
In Barcelona, July 2018, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC), the Spanish Superior Council of Scientific Research (CSIC), three researchers and a business-background entrepreneur, founded the start-up company ELEM Biotech (http://www.elem.bio). The company is in charge of developing and commercialize a set of high-tech simulation technology targeting the biomedical sector. The core technology is Alya, the parallel multi-scale / multi-physics simulation software developed at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, by a team led by Mariano Vázquez and Guillaume Houzeaux. The company is based in Barcelona, with an office in Bristol (UK). Full Abstract
There are typically two complementary types of compute workload taking place in academic groups looking to spin-off into commercial entities:
1. Your known, production workflows which are showing promise for building up a company that can pioneer the way forward in science.
2. Your unknown, research concepts, ideas, and emerging workflows that can feed the cycle of improvement.
So how do you build up commercial compute without expending too much time and killing your budget in betting on the wrong resources?
For the past three years Alces Flight has been studying how public cloud is impacting High Performance Computing (HPC) as an emerging platform. Our exploration moved us to initially create a tool designed to launch an HPC environment straight in the cloud – but what we learned along the way has made us re-evaluate how emerging business can harness different resources in order to build a smart cycle of compute that can feed academics transitioning into company life. At the September, 2019 CompBioMed Conference we wish to share the insights made in:
• Honing characteristics of your workload to understand what constitutes production (paid commercial) work and what constitutes the research to feed improvements.
• Understanding how spreading your compute budget can help you not only survive getting started, but make strong future investments.
• Balancing both free and paid technologies and services to avoid the trap of believing you can do everything in-house. Full Abstract
Since the earliest virtual models of molecules and simulations, incredible efforts in technology and methodology have brought forth solutions and tools now employed in the understanding of biomolecular interactions
and prediction of their properties. The development and performance of these solutions were challenged by their diversity but have definitely lead to the increased use of computerized methods in a wide range of research fields, from genomics to drug design.
Acellera has acquired a strong expertise in software development and structural studies over the last 10 years. We designed, alone or in collaboration, innovative solutions for the understanding of critical events for molecular recognition like ligand binding and conformational changes of biomolecules, key steps in the drug design process. Complex protocols combined with the need for high performance infrastructure hampered the access and use of such solutions by the whole scientific community dedicated to Drug Discovery. Full Abstract
14:00
Luca Emili
(Invited Speakers)
InSilicoTrials.Com: A Cloud-Based Platform to Drive Technology Transfer of Modeling and Simulation Tools across Healthcare
For decades, universities and research centers have been applying modeling and simulation (M&S) to medical devices [1] and pharmaceutical [2] development, coining the new expression in silico clinical trials. Its use however is still limited to a restricted pool of specialists.
Making M&S available to a broad spectrum of potential users (medical device and pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, healthcare institutions) would require an easy and controlled access to M&S resources in a secure environment. A joint effort between academia, industry and regulatory bodies is therefore needed to reach a rapid adoption of a harmonized approach.
It is here proposed an easy-to-use cloud-based platform that aims to create a collaborative marketplace for M&S in healthcare, where developers and models’ creators are able to capitalize on their work while protecting their intellectual property (IP), and medical device and pharmaceutical companies can use M&S to accelerate time and to reduce costs of their research and development (R&D) processes. Full Abstract
