Because research and development for drugs is expensive and lengthy, with fewer patients to cover their costs and to perform research and trials, efforts to find treatments for rare diseases tend to get set aside. According to industry group PhRMA, even if a potential treatment is discovered, it takes 10 to 15 years on average from the research stage to make a drug available to patients who need it.
We at Google Cloud are proud to partner with Servier over the last five years to provide the technological tools to increase R&D efficiency and deliver more personalized treatments to patients faster. By combining a few of our products and technological capabilities, including artificial intelligence and high-performance computing with data infrastructure, we were able to collaborate with the team to help find treatments for rare cancers, neurological conditions, and immuno-inflammatory disorders.
The Insights team had the opportunity to interview Shweta Maniar, global director, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Google Cloud, about the impact of cloud and AI technology on drug development for rare disease.
Insights: How can pharmaceutical companies make developing rare disease treatments more viable and easier, given the astronomical research and development time and cost?
Shweta Maniar: We can all appreciate the time and financial investments required for blockbuster and meaningful drugs: billions of dollars and 10 to 15 years of research, development, regulatory compliance, and clinical trials before the drug hits the market. The realities of this process make research and development for rare disease conditions challenging.
The limited number of patients often makes it difficult for companies to see a strong return on their investment in research and development. Additionally, the research itself is complex, requiring a deep understanding of the disease and innovative approaches to clinical trials, which can be challenging with small and geographically dispersed patient populations.
This is where I see the true impact of Cloud technology, in particular high-performance computing and artificial intelligence, to make this process easier. When pharmaceutical companies can reduce development expenses and accelerate their timelines by using technology, they can afford both in time and in financial resources to pursue conditions with smaller patient populations. And the more conditions they can pursue efficiently, the more they can continue to invest. This virtuous cycle is extremely motivating and important to me and part of the reason why we at Google Cloud have enjoyed collaborating with Servier over the years.
Can you give us an example?
S.M.: Although over 7,000 known rare diseases collectively affect millions worldwide (an estimated 1 in 10 Americans), approximately 95% still lack an FDA-approved treatment, representing a vast and motivating area of unmet medical need. This is an opportunity for the pharmaceutical industry to grow and expand care for patients with high unmet needs.
Today’s pharmaceutical pipeline starts with thousands of candidate molecules, many with a low probability of success. Through experimentation, researchers identify the most promising ones. As candidates pass through each stage of development, each remaining candidate has a higher probability of success.
Limited processing power has constrained scientists’ ability to simulate interactions between small molecules and target proteins, so they can prioritize the best candidate molecules for synthesis and testing. Cloud computing offers unprecedented scalability, so research teams can do far more calculations in far less time. By using Gromacs, a highly optimized molecular dynamics (MD) simulation package on Google Cloud, Servier was able to reduce computation time from 1 week to 2 hours and reduce costs by 60 to 90%.
More efficient research means more cures for even rare diseases. Cloud computing infrastructure and services help us move more quickly from experimentation to production. Researchers can focus on science because ethics, confidentiality, and security are built into the platform.
For example, Servier has built a dedicated R&D platform on Google Cloud. The initial results speak for themselves. Thanks to the power of cloud solutions, real-world data extraction now takes only three seconds, compared to thirty hours previously. Genomic data processing times have been reduced from four weeks to just four days. Finally, the power of Google Cloud tools now enables the teams to analyze nearly 200 molecules in parallel in just two hours. A radical transformation that opens up new prospects for research and innovation while significantly reducing research-related costs.
What is the role that AI plays in helping transform drug discovery and clinical research, especially for rare diseases?
S.M.: We can use AI to improve the probability that a drug candidate will make it to market—and faster. For example, just like what is being planned at Servier, AI and machine learning can sort through millions of data points, including physicochemical properties, biological activity and more, to identify the most promising molecules even before you run simulations. AI can suggest ways to optimize the design of synthetic trials that simulate patient responses to treatments. Synthetic trials are particularly important for researching rare diseases, which offer limited populations for clinical trials.
So, there’s hope then, that life sciences companies will give rare diseases more attention?
S.M.: There’s no doubt that using advanced technologies like cloud computing and AI, we can make treating rare diseases financially sustainable. For example, we are currently exploring opportunities for scientific collaboration with Servier through our cutting-edge scientific research entities such as Google X and Google DeepMind. There’s so much potential not only in rare disease treatments, but also in precision medicine. We have seen other sectors innovate to serve niche markets, and now healthcare has the opportunity to do the same by bringing hope and healing to those who have been historically underserved.
Shweta Maniar bio
Shweta Maniar is the global strategy and market leader responsible for Life Sciences at Google Cloud. She leverages broad technology solutions, including GenAI, and cross-Alphabet relationships with industry-specific products to deepen engagements. Shweta is a proven commercial executive and leader who brings extensive operating experience spanning digital health & technology, pharmaceuticals, medical devices, and biotechnology. Prior to joining Google, she led market growth strategies relevant to technology accelerators for therapies and diagnostics at Genentech, where she received multiple awards, including two Innovation Awards and the MVP Award. She is a 2023 PharmaVoice 100 honoree. Shweta currently serves on the board of directors for Orthofix (NASDAQ: OFIX), a global orthopedic and spinal technology company, and for RXSight (NASDAQ: RXST), an ophthalmic medical technology company. Shweta also serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Allen Institute for Immunology, a bioscience research institute working to advance the fundamental understanding of human immunology.
