BOSTON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Digital Health Impact – Aimed at offering more effective drugs at a lower cost to cancer patients turning to photomedicine as an alternative to chemotherapy, a grant from the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center (MLSC) will have chemical and data scientists working side by side at the Lopez Lab of Boston’s Northeastern University and the Cambridge facilities of Kebotix, an artificial intelligence technology company for new chemicals and materials.
“From a business perspective, one desired result is faster commercialization of potential products”
“What makes this grant different from many others is it’s bringing industry and academics closer together, while importing top data scientists to Massachusetts to work on today’s most pressing life science problems,” said Dr. Steven Lopez, assistant professor of chemistry at Northeastern University.
The project was among several announced today at Digital Health Impact 2019, a summit hosted by the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council that explores how life sciences companies may capitalize on the power of data and digital technologies in transforming drug development, discovery and patient care.
Lopez’s research team uses high-throughput quantum mechanical computation to identify next-generation organic materials for applications in renewable energy and photomedicine. The results of these computations are open-access via Lopez’s website (web.northeastern.edu/lopezlab/verdedb). Partnering with Kebotix and its self-driving lab, the world’s first for materials discovery powered by machine learning algorithms for decision making and robots for synthesis and characterization, the Lopez Lab is expected to drastically accelerate development of multicolor chromophores used in cancer surgery and light-activated therapy.