Bringing new drugs to market is a costly, time-consuming endeavor. On top of that, most medicines fail at some point in the research and development phase. Sarah Guo is joined by Sajith Wickramasekara, co-founder and CEO of Benchling, a company that has not only become the central system of record for biotech R&D, but uses AI agents to assist scientists to help fix this broken system. Sajith details the roadblocks that impede drug development and approval, the “dot com” bust occurring in biotech, and how AI agents and simulation can help scientists experiment faster. Plus, they talk about China’s competitive rise in the pharma space, and the unique challenges of building an interdisciplinary culture that merges the worlds of science and software.

Rebuild biotech for the AI era - Sajith Wickramasekara

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Chapters:

00:00 – Sajith Wickramasekara Introduction

00:38 – Origin and Mission of Benchling

02:08 – The Drug Development Process

03:49 – Current State of the Biotech industry

08:46 – AI’s Role in Biotech

16:14 – Benchling AI and Its Impact

18:36 – The Future of AI in Biotech

26:28 – Debunking AI Drug Discovery Myths

28:50 – Data’s Role in Biotech

29:35 – The Importance of Tools in Pharma

31:28 – AI’s Impact on Scientific Research

34:55 – Building a Biotech Company

40:18 – Interdisciplinary Collaboration in Biotech

43:06 – Tech and Biotech: Learning from Each Other

48:16 – Conclusion