Issue link: https://nebusinessmedia.uberflip.com/i/1496515
Central MA Life Sciences Report 23 the biotech boom unfold. As the industry grew rapidly, he felt there were applications of the science in a larger humanitarian context. "I saw the power of the technology and wanted to use it more broadly," he said. His research now focuses on veterinary medicine and applications of treatments in the developing world, two areas receiving an under-representative amount of attention in the development of drugs in his estimation. A challenge in an academic lab like Shoemaker's is the cost barrier. The cost of getting products commercialized is significant, he said. Investing a large amount of money in a product that does not have immediate returns makes getting treatments to market an uphill battle, and academics like Shoemaker have to rely on partnerships with corporations and government funding. "They are still considered experimental, and there is still a need to prove their value to the market," he said. Using artificial intelligence to enhance R&D Cost, while always in consideration, is less of a concern at large pharmaceutical development companies like Abbvie. For Schwartz Sterman, who leads the pathology group at Abbvie, that budget is being used to investigate the next generation of treatment using precision, personalized medicine. The resources needed to do this, though, are huge, she said. The past decade has been a whirlwind of technological developments to allow researchers to better understand human disease, said Schwartz Sterman. The pathology team is now able to look at human tissue samples in a holistic manner, rather than one gene at a time, which until recently was the only possibility. Now they can be understood as they relate to surrounding genes and pathways, she said. "Now you can understand the P H O T O S / E D D C O T E Daniela Bedenice, professor of large animal medicine at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, runs the alpaca farm where researchers use the animals to develop treatments for humans and animals. Artificial intelligence "is going to transform how we do drug discovery." Annette Schwartz Sterman, Abbvie Continued on page 24