Can AI Build the First New Pharma Giant in Decades? | Formation Bio CEO Ben Liu
About this episode
Ben Liu discusses how AI could revolutionize the pharmaceutical industry and the challenges in drug development.
Over the last decade, the number of drug candidates entering development has doubled, yet the number of successful drug approvals remains flat at ~50 per year. This week, we sit down with Formation Bio founder and CEO Ben Liu. His company has raised more than $600 million to build what he hopes will become the first new enduring pharmaceutical company in decades, powered by AI. Ben explains why he believes clinical development, not drug discovery, is becoming the industry's biggest bottleneck, and how AI could fundamentally change the economics of bringing new medicines to patients. We cover: Why there hasn't there been a big pharma company created since the 1980s Which drug categories Ben believes could become the next GLP-1s and reshape healthcare Why Formation Bio chose to become a pharmaceutical company instead of selling software The real bottleneck in bringing medicines to patients Ben's roadmap for how AI will transform drug development over the next 10 to 20 years About our guest: Ben Liu is the co-founder and CEO of Formation Bio. He received his DPhil at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, leveraging machine-learning, AI, and big-data to develop diagnostics and therapeutics for…
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