EP 143: Harnessing human data in drug development with Jakob Steinfeldt, Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Pheiron
July 18, 2024
This week, we’re joined by Jakob Steinfeldt, Co-Founder and Chief Scientific Officer at Pheiron, and Honorary Research Fellow at University College London. Jakob and his team are working to create the ‘GPS’ for drug development, using causal insights to identify highly-informed drug targets, with the aim of accelerating clinical trials and revolutionising researchers’ ability to classify highly-relevant patients.
Join Patrick and Jakob as they discuss the transition from academia to the world of start-ups, exactly why machine learning has so much potential, and how Pheiron is utilising human data to help get high-impact treatments to patients faster.
0:00 Intro to The Genetics Podcast
01:00 Welcome to Jakob and background on Pheiron
02:14 What made Jakob decide to start Pheiron, what the company does, and how his scientific background inspired him to found a start-up
5:24 Jakob’s excitement and inspiration around the power and potential of machine learning
07:07 Cardiology and heart failure as an example of the gap between where research needs to be compared to where it is today
10:52 Why creating the GPS for identifying patients at increased risk of disease is a challenge on multiple fronts
12:42 How Pheiron’s approach and specificity is opening up the possibility of identifying highly-relevant patients and running clinical trials at greater pace
17.35 How testing potential treatments in a highly-specific population affects the design of Phase 3 clinical trials
21:19 The types of data required to build Pheiron’s GPS - from population scale insights to deep analysis within subgroups
23:48 Whether there is a shortage of healthcare systems with robust research arms looking to participate in such collaborations
27:30 Working with patients to build a collaborative commitment to data sharing
28:22 Making the decision to start Pheiron rather than continue working in medicine or research
30:38 Core learnings from building a company from the ground up
31:35 What Jakob is currently most focused on and what he hopes to achieve with Phieron in the immediate future
34:40 Closing remarks
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