We were wowed by the incredible progress made by our customers and the scientific community at large in 2023—from delivering treatments for hard-to-treat conditions, to helping create a greener world with novel products, to adopting the data infrastructure needed to push the boundaries of innovation with multimodal R&D and advanced technologies like AI. We cannot wait to see what’s in store for 2024. Here are five(5) key trends we’re excited to see unfold.
1. AI and ML - Increasing Impact and Presenting New Challenges
A lot has been said about AI in the past few years, including by us. We’ve written about the dawn of AI in drug discovery, reviewed lessons learned for AI in chemistry, explored how to get AI-ready, and dove into the challenges of using tools like ChatGPT with scientific research. In 2024, AI will remain at center stage.
This year, in healthcare, we could start to see how the first AI-based drugs fare in clinical trials, and we may witness how AI-powered tools, like those from PathAI, can help improve patient profiling and diagnostics. Dotmatics’ VP Global Head of Science, Alister Campell, predicts that, in 2024, companies will start to see how their data-management efforts have positioned them to reap the benefits of AI. He explained to BioItWorld, “Life science companies will start to see the fruits of digitalization as they increase the use of drug repurposing, making it easier to navigate the swaths of data that have previously been locked away in silos, unlocking the potential of drugs that have been shown to be safe but missed initial clinical endpoints.”
In the chemicals and materials industry in 2024, we could see AI being used to accelerate R&D processes, optimize materials performance, and improve ROI, speed up the development of green and sustainable materials, and support ecological-sound practices, such as by helping cut emissions in carbon-heavy sectors.
AI will likely take on a growing role in scientific R&D, as LLMs and generative AI models become more refined thanks to growing use and innovators develop specialized models that leverage scientific laws, empirical evidence, and carefully curated data. With AI technology becoming more complex, scalable, and multimodal, its utility will expand across various facets of R&D, helping to reduce costs, shorten timelines, and supercharge innovation. We will likely see growing application of AI within early product design and testing, development and manufacturing, and even post-marketing assessment and optimization. IDC projects that global spending on AI will continue to grow this year, potentially exceeding $500 billion by 2027.
An essential underpinning to making those AI investments pay off is data. Per IDC, “In an AI Everywhere world, data is a crucial asset, feeding AI models and applications. Technology suppliers and service providers recognize this and will accelerate investments in additional data assets that they believe will improve their competitive position.”
But for scientific R&D companies, the most valuable data cannot be bought. It is their own proprietary data. However, capturing and managing scientific R&D data is uniquely challenging because of the complexity of the data types and innovation cycles. Dotmatics is helping address these challenges. One key way we’ll do this in 2024 is by building out our adaptable, scientifically-aware, data-management platform, Dotmatics Luma™.
Luma flexibly and securely aggregates all relevant R&D data into correlated data structures, thereby enabling reliable data analysis and paving the way for meta-analysis and AI/ML-based algorithms.
All of this AI progress in 2024 may also come along with new obstacles, such as a GPU shortage, a shifting AI-provider landscape, evolving technology requirements and skill demands, changing policy and regulation, and concerns over protecting IP in the age of data-driven AI—a topic Dotmatics’ CEO, Thomas Swalla, recently wrote about in Pharma Executive.
2. Biotechnology and Genetic Research -
Expanding Biologics Treatment Areas and Modalities
Last year the biologics market continued to expand into new treatment areas and modalities. This year will surely follow suit. As detailed in Nature, in the United States, 2023 biologics approvals outpaced those in 2022 for both the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—which approves treatments including antibodies, proteins, cytokines, and growth factors—and for the Center for Biologic Evaluation and Research (CBER), which handles cell and gene therapies, vaccines, and blood products.
In terms of treatment areas, the FDA’s seventeen biologics approvals moved beyond cancer and into treatments for various genetic, respiratory, immune, musculoskeletal, skin, gastrointestinal, hematologic, lysosomal, and neurological diseases. CBER’s nearly two dozen approvals also spanned cancer, neurologic conditions, hematology, and infectious disease (including three new RSV vaccines).
We saw growing diversification in modalities as well, with approvals for various proteins therapies (including enzymes, a hormone, fusion protein, and both mAb and bispecific antibodies), oligonucleotides (including siRNA, antisense, and RNA aptamer), and conjugates. Of particular note were the first-ever approved CRISPR-Cas-9 gene editing product, Vertex’s and CRISPR Therapeutics’ sickle-cell-disease treatment CASGEVY (exagamglogene autotemcel), as well as the first-ever-approved redosable gene therapy and first-and-only treatment for disorder dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa (DEB)—VYJUVEKTM (beremagene geperpavec)—from Krystal Biotech, which recently shared how Dotmatics solutions helped streamline its R&D efforts.
Companies looking to optimize biologics R&D in 2024 can turn to the Dotmatics Biologics Discovery Solution to support diversification, structural and process complexity, and workflow intricacy. With trusted solutions across biology, chemistry, and data analysis, visualization and management, Dotmatics can support R&D on a range of modalities, such as CAR-T, CRISPR, multiformat antibodies, RNA therapeutics, and chemically-modified biologics.
3. Personalized Medicine - Shifting Paradigms by Leveraging Data
As we explored in our blog, Transitioning To Personalized Medicine, data is helping deliver a paradigm shift in medicine and healthcare.
Analysts predict that in 2024 we will see steady growth in the personalized medicine market, which is expected to reach around $500 billion by 2027. In the coming year, we will continue to see personalized medicine expand beyond cancer and into other treatment areas, such as CNS, infectious, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative diseases.
The data guiding personalized medicine’s advancement is rapidly expanding beyond genomics into integrated multi-omic data. Therefore, the success of personalized medicine will hinge on how well companies can apply data-management and AI technology in order to profile patients, develop targeted therapeutics, and inform personalized treatment plans. Getting data systems and processes in order will be a necessary precursor for many companies. This might mean investing in infrastructure to seamlessly handle vast volumes of diverse data types; establishing processes to collect, harmonize, and govern data that goes in and out of AI models; or finding ways to collaboratively refine models by supporting data sharing across industry and academia, while still protecting IP. The pace at which personalized medicine can advance will closely correlate with how well the industry can tackle these unprecedented challenges in data science and industry collaboration.
As we move from idea to reality, Dotmatics is creating a best-in-market scientific data-management platform—Dotmatics Luma—to help companies harmonize and apply their data as they work to advance the way drugs are developed and patients are treated.
4. Climate Science, Green Chemistry, and Sustainable Materials Design - Spurring Change with Data-Driven R&D
Climate records were shattered in 2023 according to the World Meteorological Organization, which reports record-high greenhouse gas, increased extreme weather, and rising sea levels and surface temperatures. The impact of these changes is wide-ranging: wildfires, flooding, habitat destruction, food insecurity, population displacement, human-health risks. According to researchers at Cornell and the Alliance for Science, there is greater than 99% consensus that climate change is being driven by humans, primarily via fossil fuel usage. We can likewise drive change for the better.
In 2024, we will likely see growing efforts in green and sustainable material design. One company making progress on this front is Checkerspot, which shared how Geneious has helped in its creation of sustainable, algae-based alternatives to petroleum-based materials. Other notable companies shifting toward sustainability include LEGO, which aims to make most of its products from sustainable sugarcane by 2030, and Adidas, which has committed to reducing plastic waste and already offers a range of sustainable products.
In the coming year, we will also see growing efforts in clean and renewable energy research, where AI is increasingly being used to propel change. One company at the forefront of this effort is Orbital Materials. This start-up aims to apply generative AI to accelerate the development of clean-energy solutions, such as through carbon-emission-capture technology, as well as fuel alternatives and improved battery technology. The company was co-founded by an alumnus from DeepMind, the Google AI Lab that brought us the protein-structure-prediction program AlphaFold.
Successful climate-conscious innovation will demand that companies can efficiently capture, leverage, and build off their R&D data. But finding an informatics system to support novel R&D has long been challenging because of the complexity and variability of the research workflows and data types; on top of this, an increased focus on sustainability further complicates factors, such as early ingredient selection, tracking and origin-tracing, as well as later product testing, refinement, and production. R&D teams working with novel materials and workflows in order to help create a greener world can turn to the Dotmatics Chemicals and Materials Solution to integrate complex data sources and implement data-driven workflows.
5. Nanotechnology - Driving Innovation Across Diverse Industries
Nanotechnology—the study and engineering matter between 1 and 100 nanometers—has evolved from novel technology to an essential innovation tool for a wide range of industries, from materials science to medicine. By allowing for more precise control over physical, chemical, and biological properties, nanotechnology has already helped deliver a range of new-and-improved products, such as better batteries, stronger, lighter, more efficient coatings and composites, improved imaging technology, novel biosensors, and targeted drug-delivery systems. Nanotechnology was front and center in last year’s 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which recognized the discovery of quantum dots—nanoparticles whose size-dependent properties make them uniquely important to driving innovation within areas such as electronics, sensors, solar technology, biological-tissue mapping, and surgical guides.
While nanotechnology’s impact will continue to be far-reaching in 2024, its potential role in progressing sustainable materials R&D is especially promising. A 2024 market analysis suggests nanotechnology could help in the creation of greener materials, such as those featuring reduced carbon footprints, solvent alternatives, non-toxic components, lower volatility, and eco-friendly manufacturing practices. ACS Nano’s Editor-in-Chief suggests, “In the sphere of sustainability development, particularly carbon capture and storage, hydrogen technology, and electrochemical energy storage, nanomaterials are emerging as indispensable components in the pursuit of sustainable solutions.”
Nanotechnology is also spurring change in medicine, where it is playing an essential role in progressing diagnostics, imaging, and drug delivery. Analysts predict that the nanomedicine market will see exponential growth with an ~11% CAGR through 2028; this growth is being driven by increased funding, government support, and demand for novel treatments to chronic diseases. In 2023, the Nobel Prize for Medicine was awarded to researchers whose work in nucleoside base modifications was essential to the development of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines; the role of nanoparticle delivery systems in bringing those vaccines to fruition cannot be overlooked. But as we discussed in previous Dotmatics blogs, creating drug-delivery systems for products like modified RNA demands collaboration amongst R&D teams who must find ways to bridge their worlds of biology, chemistry, and materials science—-something that isn’t easy to do without a scientific R&D platform like Dotmatics that supports cross-functional research.
What’s in Store in 2024?
While exciting things are on the horizon, progress does not often come without pain. We’d love to discuss what your R&D teams are working on in 2024 and explore how Dotmatics solutions can help you overcome any obstacles standing in your way.
