Agile methodology is a project management and software development methodology that focuses on flexibility, collaboration, and customer-centric development. It encourages iterative progress through short cycles know as ''sprints'' or ''iterations,'' during which teams continuously plan, execute, and assess their work. Agile prioritizes responding to change, delivering small but functional parts of the product frequently, and involving stakeholders throughout the process.
Key principles of Agile:
1. Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
People and communication are valued more then rigid procedures.
Prioritizing individuals and interactions over processes and tools promotes a more flexible and collaborative approach.
2. Working software over comprehensive documentation
Functional software is prioritized over extensive planning and documentation.
3. Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Ongoing dialogue with customers helps deliver exactly what they need.
4. Responding to change over following a plan
Agile allows for flexibility and adaptability when priorities or circumstances change.
Adapting to change is key, as flexibility often leads to better
outcomes than rigidly following a set plan.
Benefits of Agile:
1. Faster Delivery
Products are delivered in small, manageable increments, leading to quicker releases and feedback cycles.
2. Improved Customer Satisfaction
Constant customer involvement ensures that the product meets their needs and can be adjusted based on feedback.
3. Flexibility and Adaptability
Agile teams can quickly respond to changing requirements, minimizing the risk of producing an outdated or irrelevant product.
Flexibility and adaptability are essential for navigating an ever-changing environment, ensuring success in the face of uncertainty."
4. Better collaboration and communication
Daily meetings (e.g., standups) and close communication help the team stay aligned and tackle issues early.
5. Higher Quality
Continuous testing and iterative development allow teams to catch and resolve issues sooner.
6. Increased Transparency
Stakeholders have visibility into the progress of the project, and issues can be addressed in real-time.
7. Reduced Risk
By delivering small, functional parts frequently, Agile minimizes the risk of large-scale project failure.
Implementing proactive strategies leads to reduced risk, ensuring smoother operations
and increased stability.
In essence, Agile allows organizations to be more responsive and adaptive, delivering value more efficiently while reducing the risks associated with long-term projects.
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While artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize a wide range of sectors, the field of drug development may see the most significant advancements in this new era of data-infused machine intelligence. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can speed up the hunt for new medication ideas by helping researchers forecast how various chemical compounds will interact with particular targets in the body by evaluating massive volumes of biological data.
CardiaTec, a Cambridge University spinout, is working to combat cardiovascular diseases (CVD) in light of this. The startup announced today that it has raised $6.5 million in a seed round of funding to support its operations.
According to The World Health Organization (WHO), cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for 17.9 million deaths annually. At the top of the list, accounting for 13% of global fatalities, is ischemic heart disease, also known as coronary heart disease.
Raphael Peralta (CEO) and Thelma Zablocki (COO), two recent biotech and bioengineering graduates, created CardiaTec. Their third co-founder and chief technology officer, Namshik Han, who teaches AI drug discovery at the University of Cambridge, where Peralta and Zablocki completed their MPhil in Bioscience Enterprise, provides support. With a background in cancer genomes, cancer epigenomics, computational biology, and machine learning, Han leads the university's Milner Therapeutics Institute, which establishes strong relationships with the pharmaceutical sector.
Peralta said in an interview with TechCrunch, "He (Han) is an academic who sits on the border with industry, so he understands that translational perspective." "We got together because we wanted to apply Namshik's work in the cardiovascular domain."
CardiaTec is addressing the main issue: According to Deloitte, the average cost of developing a medication candidate from discovery to launch is approximately $2.2 billion, and this cost is significantly influenced by the fact that 90% of possible candidates fail along the process. The goal of CardiaTec is to "decode" the biology of CVDs.
In order to accomplish this, the company has partnered with 65 hospitals in the United States and the United Kingdom to obtain human heart tissue as part of its larger data collection efforts. This will enable the company to create what it refers to as the "largest human heart tissue-multi-omics dataset," which covers a wide range of biological data from various molecular biology fields. CardiaTec wants to find new, focused treatments by doing this.
“Historically, it’s been very difficult to access human tissue, especially those of deceased people because of matters related to consent, ethics, and logistics,” Peralta said. “Now the infrastructure in hospitals is much more embedded, and we can actually begin to get access to these human tissues and generate data.”
In the context of cardiovascular disease, this means that CardiaTec can compare healthy artery tissue with that of an artery where plaque buildup has led to a heart attack, and generate the data its computational models need further downstream. Such computational approaches, involving a vast amount of different “multi-omics” data types, are capable of aggregating and analyzing data at a scale humans simply can’t match.
“We can now look not just in genetics, but we can look at genetics, epigenetics, gene expression, protein function, all in a single model,” Peralta said. “So we have a much more in depth understanding of the mechanisms that are driving disease.”
The core issue
Even while medications assisted by artificial intelligence (AI) have not yet reached the market, the early promise has generated great excitement and attracted enormous sums of money for a number of firms. Just in the last few months, companies like Xaira have come out of stealth with $1 billion in finance, while Formation Bio, backed by Sam Altman, has raised $372 million. Meanwhile, Healx has secured $47 million in funding to find novel medications for uncommon illnesses in the UK.
The pharmaceutical business Insilico Medicine, heavily financed by venture capital, recently revealed that it has discovered a novel treatment candidate for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an uncommon lung condition. This achievement was a world first. AI was essential in developing the drug's chemical structure as well as determining which cell type the medication should target. The medication is presently undergoing "Phase II" trials in China and the United States in the hopes of gathering the data required to prove its effectiveness in treating people. The medicine was first tested on animals.
AI is also being utilized in other areas to aid in the discovery of novel medications for treating obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and new antibiotics to combat superbugs.
According to Peralta, one of CardiaTec's primary differentiators is that it focuses only on cardiovascular disease, whereas just 3% of active AI-first firms are addressing this condition. Peralta cited data from the peer-reviewed publication Nature Reviews Drug Discovery.
According to Peralta, "the majority of companies using AI for therapeutic discovery are in the oncology space, with the rest specializing in respiratory, infectious, and central nervous system disorders, and, at the bottom of the list, neurogenic diseases and cardiovascular diseases." "Not many people are aware that cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death worldwide, but there is a significant unmet need that hasn't been addressed by pharmaceutical companies."
With this additional $6.5 million in cash, CardiaTec, which had previously raised $1.8 million in pre-seed capital, is well-financed to expand its unique data collection activities, validate its therapeutic targets model in a wet lab, and support its eight-person team in Cambridge. The next stage, which in the overall scheme of drug R&D is probably some years away, is to begin selecting and testing genuine medication candidates.
Montage Ventures led CardiaTec's seed round, in which Continuum Health Ventures, Laidlaw Ventures, Apex Ventures, and many angel investors also participated.
Google's attempt to reverse a 2017 European Commission antitrust ruling has failed once more. The bloc determined that Alphabet, the parent company of Google, had violated competition laws with its shopping comparison service. As a result, it fined the company a record-breaking €2.42 billion (about $2.7 billion at current exchange rates) and mandated changes to the way it runs the business.
After Google filed an appeal, the General Court of the European Union essentially rejected the case in November 2021. It affirmed the Commission's penalty and demonstrated that favoring its own shopping service above competitors' shopping comparison services in general search results was anti-competitive. That part of the verdict was annulled by the Court, who found that the Commission had not proven Google's actions may have had anticompetitive effects on the market for general search services as a whole.
Google filed a second appeal against the EU's decision with the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU), the EU's highest court. On Tuesday, the CJEU issued a finding that will not be to Google's satisfaction.
The analysis of the General Court was accepted by the CJEU. "Google's conduct was discriminatory and did not fall within the scope of competition on the merits," the court stated in a news statement, taking into account the features of the market and the particulars of the case.
When contacted for comment, Google spokesperson Rory O'Donoghue sent an email expressing the company's dissatisfaction with the decision. "We are not happy with the court's ruling. This ruling is based on a very particular combination of circumstances. In order to abide by the ruling of the European Commission, we made adjustments back in 2017. Over the course of more than seven years, our strategy has produced billions of clicks for more than 800 comparison shopping firms.
Google's appeal against the Shopping ruling may now be on hold as it may merely aim to raise a legal argument against the CJEU.
The internet behemoth has appealed multiple prior antitrust rulings from the Commission. It lost a significant appeal once more in September 2022 when the EU General Court mainly upheld the EU's €4.34 billion antitrust penalties pertaining to the way the tech giant runs its Android mobile platform.
CJEU: Apple owes $15B in Irish back taxes & fees
In unrelated CJEU news, the Court ruled in favor of the Commission again on Tuesday. This one involves Apple since it relates to a 2016 ruling by the bloc that stated Apple should have paid billions more in taxes since it profited from unlawful tax advantages in Ireland from 1991 to 2014. The iPhone manufacturer was required Apple send the EU $15 billion in overdue taxes and penalties by September 2018. Nonetheless, Apple (as well as Ireland) prevailed in an appeal against the General Court in July 2020. It overturned the EU's ruling.
Following an appeal by the Commission, the CJEU overturned the General Court's decision on Tuesday, concluding that Ireland had given Apple illegal help that it must now reimburse.
Only a legal point may be raised in an appeal of the CJEU ruling by Apple and Ireland.
Apple spokesperson Tom Parker sent TechCrunch the following statement when he was contacted for comment on the State Aid ruling: "This case has never been about how much tax we pay, but which government we are required to pay it to." Wherever we operate, we always pay all the taxes we due and there has never been a special offer. Being one of the biggest taxpayers in the world and a catalyst for innovation and progress in Europe and beyond makes Apple proud. The European Commission is attempting to amend the regulations retroactively and is ignoring the fact that our revenue was already subject to US taxes, as required by international tax law. We are dissatisfied with the ruling made today because the General Court had already examined the evidence and declared the matter to be officially dismissed.
The press section of the bloc refrained from making any comments prior to the press conference on both rulings that the head of the Commission's competition policy, Margrethe Vestager, is scheduled to hold later today.
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