Daphne Koller is best known as the cofounder of Coursera, the open database for online learning that launched in 2012. But before her work on Coursera, she was doing something much different. In 2000, Koller started working on applying machine learning to biomedical data sets to understand gene activity across cancer types. She put that work on hold to nurture Coursera, which took many more years than she initially thought it would. She didn’t return to biology until 2016 when she joined Alphabet’s life science research and development arm Calico.
Two years later, Koller started Insitro, a drug discovery and development company that combines biology with machine learning. “I’m actually coming back to this space,” she says.
There’s a lot of hope that artificial intelligence could help speed up the time it takes to make a drug and also increase the rate of success. Several startups have emerged to capitalize on this opportunity. But Insitro is a bit different from some of these other companies, which rely more heavily on machine learning than biology
By contrast, Insitro has taken the time to build a cutting-edge laboratory, an expensive and time-consuming project. Still, having equal competency in lab-based science and computer science may prove to be the winning ticket. Though only two years old, Insitro has already caught the attention of old-guard pharmaceutical companies. Last year, the company struck a deal with pharmaceutical giant Gilead to develop tools and hopefully new drug targets to help stop the progression of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NASH). The partnership netted Insitro $15 million with the potential to earn up to $200 million for each drug target.
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