The steel industry is not a common birthplace of biotech companies, but Andrew Hopkins traces the ideas that became Exscientia back to his time there. New technologies and new processes replaced nearly 90% of the steel workforce, and Hopkins kept those market lessons. He says, “When I ended up in pharma and biotech, I had a very different perception of the power of commerce and markets and what they can potentially drive, and the power of new technology to position oneself in those markets.”
In this episode, Andrew Hopkins, CEO and Executive Director of Exscientia, speaks with host Stan Gloss of BioTeam about his desire to fundamentally change drug creation mechanics and processes with technology, his graduate experience working in human immunodeficiency virus drug design at Oxford University, and his stint at Pfizer. He also discusses Exscientia’s machine learning-based and model-driven approach to drug design, the connection between knowledge and efficiency in drug optimization projects, and its fourth platform-designed drug launch into the clinic.
Andrew Hopkins, CEO and Executive Director, Exscientia
Andrew is among the most distinguished and cited scientists in modern drug discovery. As founder and CEO of Exscientia, he invented and championed an automated and algorithmic drug design and discovery approach. Before that, he spent 14 years at Pfizer and in academia, pioneering cutting-edge projects using data mining and machine learning in the pharmaceutical industry. His papers, published in Nature journals, are widely considered pivotal points in the new paradigm of modern drug discovery.