Welcome - Accelerating Nordics life science innovation through digital science
Markus Herrgård, CTO, BII

Nordic countries rank among world leaders in life science research and product launches, digital competitiveness, and ease of doing business. This establishes a strong foundation to build a life sciences ecosystem in the Nordics that accelerates innovation through digital science.

Hear how the BioInnovation Institute (BII) catalyses the growth of this ecosystem in the Nordics by providing funding, network, expertise, and infrastructure for early-stage life science startups. Understand how digital science plays a critical role in BII’s activities to enable faster translation of research to products for the benefit of people and society.

Digital transformation to unlock the power of biotechnology

Saji Wickramasekara, CEO, Benchling

Highlights from the digital transformation of early research at Novo Nordisk

Allan Shaw, Corporate Vice President, Digital & Research Intelligence, Novo Nordisk

Digitalisation of early pharmaceutical research is pivotal for the future success of drug discovery. Join this session to learn about Novo Nordisk’s digital transformation journey in early research. You’ll gain insights into the company’s progression in the areas of data science, computational life science, and research informatics, the challenges as well as the vision to digitalise Early Research.

DTU's best practices and learnings to successfully deploy lab automation, ML/AI & data science approaches 

Kai Blin, Senior Researcher, DTU

DTU has been deploying lab automation tools, machine learning/AI, and data science approaches for biotechnology research at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability since the Centre's inception in 2010. Join this session to hear DTU share practical lessons and pitfalls to avoid based on first-hand experience and use cases in the areas of automation, ML/AI, and data science. DTU will also share its outlook and predictions for the field over the next 5 years, listing key potential stumbling blocks along the way, and how FAIR data practices can help avoid most of these.

Setting a successful foundation for R&D digital transformation

Dortea Engelund, Principal Consultant, Devote Consulting

Join this session to gain practical learnings and insights to implement a successful digital transformation strategy for your R&D organisation. Dortea will share her consulting experiences in helping other biotech organisations plan and execute their digital transformation strategies. You’ll also receive guidance on establishing an effective framework to overcome organisational challenges when building a digital strategy.

Coffee Break

Using AI in Translational Science

Ola Sternebring, Principal Pharmacokineticist, Ferring Pharmaceuticals 

Join this session to learn how AI and mechanistic modelling is being deployed at Ferring from early discovery to the clinical stage to enhance speed, accuracy and quality of the development process as well as to ensure successful transition from discovery to early human trials and beyond. Examples covered include finding the right target, understanding efficacious/safe doses in the clinical phase as well as predicting biomarkers and phenotypes of responders possibly enabling a technology platform equipped to deliver on the promise of precision medicine.

Modernising your in vivo programs with a connected R&D platform

Chris Armstrong, Strategy Lead, Benchling

In vivo studies are an essential component of biopharmaceutical R&D that help teams understand drug pharmacology, safety, and toxicology. They sit on the critical path to bringing new drugs into the clinic, so it’s imperative to run them accurately, efficiently, and collaboratively. Yet many teams still struggle to manage the end-to-end process of running in vivo studies using spreadsheets, email, and outdated point solutions. Modern drug development teams require an in vivo solution that aligns with the specialised nature of vivarium work, yet also remains connected to their broader R&D programs. In this session, we will share some of the frequent challenges observed across the industry, followed by real-world examples of companies modernising their in vivo programs. We'll provide insights on how to drive collaboration across R&D teams by leveraging connected, cloud-based R&D applications that facilitate sample transfers for bioanalysis and joining of data for scientific decision-making.

Paving the way for FAIR Data at Lundbeck Research: From strategy to implementation

Lena Tagmose, Senior Director of Molecular Design and Enabling Technologies, Lundbeck

FAIR data in drug discovery and development has transformational benefits. However the industry has been slow to embrace FAIR data - in part due to the difficulties of establishing the required infrastructure and change management. Learn about Lundbeck’s strategy for implementing FAIR data and current progress as the company looks to drive faster data-driven decision making at all stages of the preclinical drug discovery process. Lena will share real-life examples of successful FAIR data implementation for small molecule chemistry and how Lundbeck is overcoming roadblocks such as culture, resources, and siloed thinking. You’ll also get a sneak-peek into the FAIRification of research data across Lundbeck and their plan to define strategy and identify systems to support biologics and in-vivo data.

Lunch Break

Road to developing CRISPR-based microbial gene therapies

Benjamin Wohl, Automation and research team lead, SNIPR Biome

SNIPR Biome is a clinical stage biotech company pioneering the development of precision medicines for vulnerable patients with difficult-to-treat conditions using CRISPR-based microbial gene therapy.
Attend this session to hear about the company’s journey of bringing the first CRISPR-based microbial gene therapy into the clinic, its SNIPR001 cocktail. Hear how Benchling supported the company's strategy to centralise data, while enabling digitalisation and automation across teams and processes. You'll also hear real examples of how they set up an in-house sequencing pipeline with end-to-end process tracking to accelerate research.

Building a DNA synthesis platform with R&D data accessibility and traceability to enable gene technologies & therapies

Cosimo Ducani, CEO, Moligo Tech

Current DNA synthesis is hampering biotech companies from realising the full potential of new gene therapies and technologies. Hear how Moligo Technologies developed an enzyme based DNA synthesis technology to deliver ultrapure DNA strand synthesis that overcomes the limitations of length, complexity and scale to drive a democratic genomic revolution. Learn how Moligo is accessing and tracing all data from production, R&D, and process development activities in a unified R&D platform to support its exponential growth.

Translating microbiome data into actionable results using Precision Microbiome Profiling (PMP™)

Ana Finzel, Senior Scientist, Bio-Me

Join this session to learn about the human microbiome and the associated challenges of applying next-generation sequencing (NGS) for microbiome profiling. You'll hear how Bio-Me developed its proprietary Precision Microbiome Profiling (PMP™) technology to overcome these traditional NGS limitations and the potential clinical applications of PMP™ data. Bio-Me will also share its vision and progress to implement a unified R&D and service lab that supports their technology development across the complete R&D lifecycle.

Coffee break

Machine Learning for R&D: From hot topic to practical application

Sanjay Saraf, Product Manager, Benchling

As much as we hear about ML, not many are taking advantage of it in their scientific work. By delivering ML-driven functionality for targeted use cases, modern software can turn the theoretical into practical tools. This presentation focuses on two use cases: protein structure prediction and strain parameter optimisation. We’ll highlight how Benchling makes these tasks more efficient, and highlight the impact of customers currently taking advantage of ML as part of this everyday work.

Automated plasmid construct generation at AstraZeneca

David Öling, Associate Principal Scientist - Molecular Biology and Protein Expression, AstraZeneca

Shifting to a next-generation LIMS to enable fully integrated laboratory workflow for molecular analysis

Jens Björkman, COO, TATAA Biocenter

TATAA Biocenter supports the biopharma industry and academic researchers with molecular analysis and regulated bioanalysis. They provide answers to complex biological challenges leveraging its deep knowledge in the fields of genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics. With the emergence of cell and gene therapies, new analytical tools and workflows are critical for clinical studies that rely on the characterisation of nucleic acids, like biodistribution, pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics. Hear how TATAA implemented a next-gen unified R&D platform with robust Laboratory Information Management Systems (LIMS) and Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN) capabilities to comply with strict regulatory processes and drive experimental efficiency. Learn how the Benchling R&D Cloud is enabling TATAA to capture and store data with complete visibility of the entire process - from the arrival and storage of samples, to nucleic acid extraction, to final recording of results. Scientists are empowered with complete control of the workflow and full process traceability through an audit trail.

Explainable AI for RNA therapeutic development
Lykke Pedersen, Head of RNA Therapeutics, Abzu

 
RNA therapeutics and explainable AI — two of the most promising advances in healthcare technology — are fundamentally transforming what’s possible in the field of therapeutic development. With symbolic regression, heterogeneous data such as sequences and multi-omics can quickly be integrated, and complex nonlinear relationships can be identified — even for wide datasets. The core technology of Abzu®, the QLattice®, is a symbolic regression engine that generates a veritably infinite number of mathematical models to explain fundamental interactions, while easily identifying and understanding interactions with explainable and simple models. Hear how the QLattice helps scientists gain a deeper understanding of biological and chemical mechanisms to create new drugs and modalities with increased success rates, reducing the time required for drug discovery.

Closing notes
Markus Herrgård, CTO, BII

Networking Drinks