AI researcher Daphne Koller heading new machine learning drug discovery venture

Called insitro (a portmanteau of "in silico" and "in vitro"), the new endeavor looks to stem the increasing costs of developing new drugs and, according to Koller, has already found financial backing from ARCH Venture Partners, Foresite Capital, a16z, and Third Rock Ventures. "Our hope at insitro is that big data and machine learning, applied to the critical need in drug discovery, can help make the process faster, cheaper, and (most importantly) more successful," Koller wrote in the post. "To do so, we plan to leverage both cutting-edge [machine learning (ML)] techniques, as well as the profound innovations that have occurred in life sciences, which enable the creation of the large, high-quality data sets that may transform the capabilities of ML in this space." Koller, who is also known for being one of the cofounders of the education technology company Coursera, wrote in her post that insitro hopes to offer a new research pathway for a pharmaceutical industry that has already exhausted the "low-hanging fruit" of medications. As drug research begins to turn toward more specialized treatments, smaller market sizes and more ambiguous patient populations are beginning to take a greater and greater toll on the industry, she explained.