How Biotech Leader Abzena Uses Tech to Meet Medical Needs
There are plenty of ways pharmaceutical companies are working to accelerate the development process, with innovation and technology propelling discovery and driving impact.
Abzena is a leading end-to-end bioconjugate, ADC and complex biologics CDMO+CRO. From discovery through commercial launch, it supports customers with fully integrated programmes — as well as individual services — designed to de-risk and streamline the development of new treatments for patients in need. Research, development and cGMP happens across its global facilities — San Diego, California and Bristol, Pennsylvania in the US and Cambridge in the UK.
CIO Dave Williamson is at the forefront of Abzena’s technological development, leveraging data that is critical to automation, drug discovery and accelerating outcomes.
A chemist by training, Dave’s career began with a stint in the US Army, which paid for his university studies — an experience that allowed him to travel the world and “go on many different adventures”.
He says: “I’ve always been fascinated by science, how things work.”
This prompted his move into the pharmaceutical industry, where he has spent the rest of his career to date. In roles across pharmaceuticals, generics and biotech, Dave has been working at the intersection of technology and healthcare for decades, helping with progressing medicines that benefit those underserved.
Now, as Abzena’s CIO, Dave is setting the company’s continued technological development in motion, ensuring the biopharma is data smart and delivering results for its clients and those in need
Abzena’s tech journey
Tech and pharma’s relationship is nothing new, but is becoming increasingly intertwined to improve patient outcomes and drug discovery.
For Dave, Abzena has never had an issue with having too little data or the right technology to undertake work — however, Abzena has been on a journey to ensure the right, actionable and relevant datasets are available to generate meaningful insights.
“A group of scientists have done quite a lot of work with machine learning, using it to better understand key attributes like stability, screen for antibody liabilities and antibody selection,” Dave explains. “They’re using this technology to tell you which approach has the most probability to succeed. This cuts the whole development time of getting new therapies and medicines to patients in need sooner. It’s our drive — and our clients’ drive — to achieve that.
“When you get really smart people together and they solve problems, they often solve in different ways. There’s a lot of differing cultures involved, everyone can speak up and that creates innovation. We're not just looking at how we have always done this, we're thinking about new ways to do it and how we can apply these new technologies, tapping into that innate curiosity that you have as a scientist.”
This all plays into Abzena’s overall data strategy. With now more than a decade of operations behind the team, lots of data has accumulated.
“I'm not even so sure you could easily catalogue all the data we have, but that's one of the huge benefits of technologies like AI and machine learning — we don't have to,” Dave says. “It can sift through all of it much, much quicker than people ever could. Using solutions from our partners also helps us connect into these data sources and makes it easier for the experts to connect to the data and then start using it in whatever queries and investigations that they're undertaking.”
Abzena partners with Savant Labs and Atomicwork, among others, to enrich its use of technology and ensure processes are as simple and effective as possible.
For example, Savant Labs — a company that uses AI to help analysts automate data access and preparation — provides Abzena with a modern, cloud-based data management platform that provides the agility and accessibility to effectively leverage its data to drive its scientific research and business operations. Savant Labs’ ability to connect to various data sources, Dave says, empowers Abzena’s experts to easily access, prepare and utilise data in their queries and investigations.
“It enables us to easily connect to data sources, pull that data in, combine it, manipulate it in whichever way we want and then use that to view our analytics or data science AI, ML solutions,” Dave details. “It’s a cloud-based tool that enables us to connect to diverse data sources that fuels the analytics dashboards.”
The lightweight nature of the solution enables real-time adjustments to data connections based on specific needs, unlike traditional methods requiring pre-defined architectures.
By applying the tool, Abzena has been successful in enabling non-data architecture experts to work effectively with data — fostering agility and addressing historical data silos. It also supports Abzena’s cloud-first strategy, promoting agility and scalability while maintaining necessary security and performance.
And with Atomicwork, Abzena is able to leverage its AI-enabled agent for internal support. Driven by executive interest in AI, Abzena found Atomicwork best suited for its specific use cases. It uses the platform as an IT ticketing system with the AI chatbot assisting departments across the business — from HR to finance. It provides quick answers to common employee questions, empowering employees to self-serve, reducing the burden on HR and IT staff.
Atomicwork's flexibility allows departments to independently set up and manage their own workflows, while addressing data privacy concerns.
“It's not only an IT ticketing system but is an AI-enabled agent,” Dave shares. “Any group can set up their own workflows that are independent of each other. Data privacy is always a concern, so by deploying Atomicwork and limiting any access to personnel data — we’ve been very excited by that.”
Dave believes by working with other areas of the technology world, Abzena continues to take an innovative approach. These companies are often innovative themselves in their founding — forming after working with competitors. It’s this approach that Dave praises not only as a technology leader but as a customer.
He continues: “These companies have pinpointed things that have frustrated the industry and formed to solve those problems. When you have somebody like myself that can see that and has worked with the legacy tools, you see the difference immediately. It gets you very excited and really grabs your attention.”
The impact on pharmaceuticals
By taking an innovative approach to technology, Abzena has not only automated and accelerated the drug discovery process but unlocked agility and scalability — meaning it can work with firms of all sizes while also ensuring it continues to be data smart.
“Talking about machine learning and scientific development, we’re very excited about what's possible,” Dave asserts. “This has enabled us to move from a push environment to a pull — allowing us to be proactive and see what else we could do.
“There are a lot of untapped ideas that we could use to help these technologies excel in sifting through large amounts of data — both structured for machine learning and unstructured like documents for Gen AI.
“In my own experience, you often have a very broad idea of what you might be able to achieve with technology. When it comes to scientific developments, more often it's about putting the best answer forward first. Sometimes that counters your own intuition — for example, I could guess based on my experience we should go with answer C, but the technology tells you to try B first instead. This approach allows us to cut waste, cutting the time and resources required to get to the best answer. And, at times, it uncovers things that do not make sense to the expert — and that leads to innovation.”
The prospect of continuing on this trajectory and developing these approaches at Abzena is exciting to Dave, looking ahead.
Abzena is working to further investment in its own intellectual property as well as its portfolio offerings, taking key challenges like improving yield and stability in its stride to ensure the delivery of value in the shortest possible timeframe.
By continuing to invest in technologies like ML and data science, Dave believes that Abzena will continue its approach leveraging technology to determine the best path to success.
“AI is not going to take jobs,” Dave affirms. “It needs quite a lot of help to be effective, but when it is effective, it's pretty amazing.” Dave is also quick to reiterate its ability to enhance — and how it will continue to in a way we may not be able to fathom yet.
“It’s helping us not only solve today's problems but adapt to solve tomorrow's future problems, too,” he adds.
Abzena’s future will also centre on expanding its capabilities to better serve its clients and to improve in commercial production. “With patients out in the world waiting on medicines, if we make a mistake then potentially they won't have access to it,” Dave concludes. “We’re hoping to bring in more scrutiny as there are people who rely on us to be there.
“We are also always looking at growth and helping our clients be successful and move their therapies — so not only helping clients through the drug development clinical stages, but also delivering approved medications in a reliable, consistent fashion to patients globally.”
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