China's first biocomputing platform is here, and Li Yanhong is laying out a new track for life science and technology

Text/Yang Jianyong

Earlier this month, it was reported that Baidu would seek US$2 billion to enter the field of biocomputing. The news attracted much attention. Forbes columnist Yang Jianyong once commented in Forbes: "With the advantages of computing power and algorithms, it will create a new era of biocomputing." The new era of intelligent computing in biotechnology will help drug research and development, overcome medical problems, etc., thereby promoting the development of precision medicine, and use AI technology to fulfill corporate social responsibilities and benefit society."

Now, the latest situation shows that "BioMap" (English abbreviation for BioMap) initiated by Robin Li has surfaced and plans to invest tens of billions of yuan to build an independent and controllable biological computing platform. It will use AI capabilities such as cutting-edge algorithms, smart sensors, smart chips, and micro-nano robots to solve life science problems. It will be China's first biocomputing platform company, providing new momentum for the development of life science and technology, and using biocomputing technology to drive the development of life sciences. It is of great significance to human health.

"Baitu Biotechnology"exploreAINew track, becoming the first biocomputing platform company in China

According to the official website: Baitu Biotech was led by Baidu founder Robin Li and served as the chairman of the new company. BV Baidu Ventures Liu Wei served as co-founder and CEO. It should be pointed out that Baitu Biotechnology relies on the ecological foundation of the original BV Baidu Ventures Biointelligence Team and its 50 global invested companies, and empowers the technology of entrepreneurial companies and scientific research institutions through independent research and development and industrial investment. Transformation of results; use technology + capital to accelerate the research and development of precision life science products such as drug design, target discovery, precision diagnosis, digital medicine, etc., to help the development of human health.

Artificial intelligence is widely used in many fields, and the integration of life technology, artificial intelligence, and big data has become a new direction and development trend in the medical field, which will unlock huge opportunities for biocomputing platform companies. Driven by artificial intelligence technology, life big data will be a huge leap in the medical field, making "precision medicine" possible. In recent years, our country has also been actively promoting the development of precision medicine, making precision medicine a new trend. Of course, this is mainly due to the rapid development of genetic technology, relying on artificial intelligence to analyze genetic data, allowing the value of genetic data to be brought into play and promoting the implementation of precision medicine.

At the same time, huge computing power is needed behind it. For Baidu, the number of Baidu intelligent cloud server stations is expected to expand to 5 million units in the next ten years, which is 7 times the total computing power of the world's TOP 500 supercomputers that can be counted today. , which means Baidu’s data center can provide more powerful computing capabilities. For Baitu Biotech, the first phase uses cutting-edge AI technology to build a complete biological computing platform. Based on this, it will invest heavily in the research and development of key underlying data equipment and computing technology to accelerate high-throughput organoid chips and high-resolution materials. The research and development of observation equipment, new omics collection and analysis equipment, protein simulation and biological computing special chips have brought new data axes and computing capabilities to the life science industry, enabling independent control of these key common platform technologies.

Industry insiders pointed out that "Baidu Biotechnology", as China's first life science platform company driven by biocomputing technology, will have a deep chemical reaction with Baidu AI platform, which has rich accumulation in the field of biocomputing, to fill in the complex problems. The key blank space between industry problems and cutting-edge algorithms will accelerate the implementation of algorithms and feed back the definition of computing problems. This will also explore a new model for the implementation of Baidu AI.

Biocomputing platform helps overcome medical problems and accelerate drug research and development

As early as 30 years ago, Robin Li was interested in life sciences and used technology to promote the development of life sciences. With the significant increase in computing power and the improvement of algorithms in recent years, life science and technology has developed rapidly. From health management to overcoming medical problems, from auxiliary medicine to drug research and development, AI technology has played a huge role.

(1) Overcoming medical problems

Earlier this year, an annual report released by the National Cancer Institute and others showed that from 2013 to 2017, the cancer mortality rate in the United States dropped by an average of 1.5% per year. Based on research analyses, the decline in cancer mortality and the flattening of mortality reflect improvements in screening, diagnostic technology and treatment. It is worth mentioning that in the United States, technology giants such as Google, Microsoft, and IBM have invested heavily in using technology to fulfill their social responsibilities. They want to use AI technology to help solve cancer treatment, from screening to prevention to treatment, etc., to reduce the risk of the disease. mortality rate, etc.

Specifically, the development of life science and technology, supported by powerful computing power, can help medical research institutions/personnel overcome medical problems more efficiently. Taking IBM as an example, it can create significant changes in the medical field. What supports it is the powerful computing power of Watson. The application of artificial intelligence and big data analysis technology from IBM Watson Health (IBM Watson medical team) In the medical industry, we help solve multiple problems in the health fields such as tumors and genes, medical imaging, life sciences, and health management.

In our country, Healthy China has become a national strategy. Artificial intelligence is one of the core technologies that promote health technology. As one of the top five AI giants in the world, Baidu has been actively exploring and developing the use of AI technology to improve medical care many years ago. It not only launched the AI Smart Medicine Smart Hui Medical brand in 2018, but also used AI to help China's primary medical care wisdom upgrade. At the same time, in the past two years, LinearFold, the world's fastest RNA structure prediction algorithm, and LinearPartition, the world's fastest RNA partitioning equation and base pair probability prediction algorithm, have been launched. This has laid the foundation for the technology to enter biological computing. reserve.

Nowadays, "Baitu Biotechnology" has emerged as a bio-computing platform. Compared with international giants such as Apple and Google, which are transforming into the medical and health field and using personal wearable devices to protect people's health, Bai Tu Biotechnology uses bio-computing. Promote the development of life science and technology, demonstrate strong AI capabilities, and strive to use high-performance biocomputing and multi-omics data technology to accelerate the development of innovative drugs and precision life science products such as early screening and early diagnosis, striving to make more diseases early warning and controllable , can be cured and realize the human dream of being healthy for 100 years.

(2) UtilizationAIAccelerate drug development

With the development of artificial intelligence technology, AI is becoming more and more popular in assisting the research and development of new drugs. Due to the long research and development cycle of new drugs, high investment, and the existence of research and development risks, many large pharmaceutical companies have outsourced research and development and production, making pharmaceutical research and development more difficult. The service industry is showing rapid growth. According to Frost & Sullivan data, the global pharmaceutical R&D services industry market size will reach US$193.7 billion by 2023, with an average annual compound growth rate of approximately 10.9% from 2018 to 2023.

In the research and development of new drugs, artificial intelligence technology has become increasingly important, especially with high requirements on computing power, algorithms and secure computing platforms. For the first time, highly flexible computing power services have emerged. Robin Li has always believed that the improvement of computing power and the reduction of gene sequencing costs The decline will bring new possibilities to life science research. The second is high security. After all, for pharmaceutical companies, the core asset is intellectual property IP, which has high data security. Combined with high-precision algorithms, it provides tools for new drug research and development.

Baidu is the first domestic company to focus on the research and investment of biological computing algorithms. The life sciences company led by Robin Li is expected to make better use of the biological AI algorithms accumulated by Baidu, supplemented by a professional R&D team in the field of life sciences, to use biological computing. Based on the platform, the "VIP" model is innovatively proposed.

The popular trend in global pharmaceutical research and development in recent years is the VIC model, which is a new drug research and development model that combines "VC (venture capital) + IP (intellectual property) + CRO (research and development outsourcing services)". The "VIP" model proposed by Baitu Biotech on top of this model uses capital (Venture) + self-participation in building IP + biocomputing and intelligent experiment platform (Platform) to accelerate the generation and transformation of IP for drugs and diagnostic pipelines, not only Bringing innovative vitality to the research and development of new drugs by pharmaceutical companies will also become the core value and source of profit of Baitu Biotechnology's biocomputing platform.

at last

As early as March 2015, the "Precision Medicine" plan was launched to invest 60 billion yuan in the field of precision medicine by 2030. With the development of artificial intelligence technology, machine learning is used to help disease detection, diagnosis, precision medicine and personalized medicine, which also reflects the value of AI technology for benefiting mankind. For "Baitu Biotechnology", which plans to invest tens of billions, it is exploring new models and using the bio-computing platform to output computing power, algorithms and tools. Combined with Baidu AI, it will continue to launch new algorithms and tools to quickly build an open source platform for the bio-computing industry. , providing more open source, efficient and accurate R&D tools for the entire biological industry, promoting the construction of a healthy China and improving people's health.