E135 Martin Akerman, CTO and Co-Founder at Envisagenics

Today's guest is Martin Akerman, CTO and Co-Founder at Envisagenics in New York. Founded in 2014, it is their mission is to reduce the complexity of biomedical data to accelerate the development of innovative therapeutic solutions through RNA splicing analytics and Artificial Intelligence. Over 30 million people in the US suffer from genetic diseases or cancer that could be caused by mutations affecting RNA splicing. 370 human diseases are known to be caused by splicing errors, and more remain to be discovered.

Their breakthrough technology SpliceCore is a cloud-based platform that is experimentally validated to predict drug targets and biomarkers through splicing discovery from RNA-seq data using AI. This is used to identify splicing errors causative of diseases, identify the right drug-targets and develop RNA therapeutics through partnerships and collaborations with Biopharma. Their in-silico RNA therapeutics discovery platform replaces expensive drug-target selection and lead design with efficient computer simulations, decreasing time, cost and failure risk of drug development programs.

In the show, Martin will chat about:

Transitioning from academia into industry,

The origins of their inspirational work at Envisagenics,

The growth they have enjoyed since setting up the company,

How to build a successful Data Science team,

What excites him for the future at Envisagenics,

Challenges they need to overcome to achieve their goals,

& How to transition into a career within Healthcare Data