The world’s largest bioresource of eye images offers window into human health and serves as basis of a new AI foundation model to boost drug discovery
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO & LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--insitro, a machine learning-enabled drug discovery and development company, and the INSIGHT Health Data Research Hub at Moorfields Eye Hospital, London, today announced a new collaboration to advance drug discovery. The collaboration will develop a novel AI foundation model to aid in genetic discovery of new ocular biomarkers for precision patient segmentation and therapeutic targets for neurodegenerative and related conditions.
INSIGHT is the world’s largest ophthalmic imaging bioresource, containing 35 million eye images, including an extensive repository of Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) images linked to several decades of clinical information. These data include diagnostic information for various chronic disorders of aging, such as neurodegenerative, ophthalmic, and metabolic diseases. Recent peer-reviewed studies enabled by INSIGHT have shown how AI foundation models built on OCT data can predict neurological and other diseases years before symptoms appear.
“OCT data at this scale contains a treasure trove of information about human health, providing a new window into diseases of the brain, the eye, and more,” said Daphne Koller, CEO and founder of insitro. “Building a world-class foundation model with INSIGHT at Moorfields will help us unravel disease biology and identify novel targets, including for our programs in neurodegenerative diseases. We are delighted to broaden our network in the UK health research ecosystem, allowing us to advance our mission of finding new and better medicines while ensuring the safe use of patient data.”
The model will support insitro’s neuroscience programs by identifying OCT-based signatures linked to dementia risk and disease progression. As part of the National Health Service (NHS), Moorfields Eye Hospital collects large volumes of OCTs before dementia diagnosis, enabling the development of a model that can differentiate OCTs of those who develop dementia from those who don’t. The vast scale of OCT images curated by INSIGHT, linked to dementia diagnosis information, is globally unique and will enable the generation of a high-quality model for insitro to use for drug discovery.
“Working with insitro to develop a novel foundation model serves INSIGHT’s mission to benefit patients, the NHS and wider society through the development of new tools for disease detection, diagnosis, and treatment,” said Professor Pearse Keane of INSIGHT at Moorfields. “This will be the first collaboration of its type for INSIGHT at Moorfields and represents a mutual commitment with insitro to unlocking new discoveries to improve human health using clinical data and AI. We have designed the collaboration to ensure the safety and privacy of patient data, with only INSIGHT at Moorfields researchers accessing the data, in a secure environment.”
The model will support insitro’s genetic discovery efforts to identify differentiated targets by being applied to research cohorts that have genetic data but contain substantially smaller numbers of OCT cases with dementia diagnosis. By learning representations of OCT data from large-scale datasets and fine-tuning on disease-specific cohorts, the model will accelerate insitro’s ability to discover new biological targets supported by human genetics.
The joint work will utilize eye research data infrastructure developed by INSIGHT at Moorfields which has enabled previous pioneering work in Oculomics. This rapidly growing research field uses ocular biomarkers to detect systemic disease, underpinned by high-resolution eye imaging such as OCT and the power of data science.
Notes to editors
Foundation models
Foundation models are large-scale models trained on broad data sets that can be adapted for a wide range of tasks. These models serve as a “foundation” upon which more specific applications and models can be built. They are characterized by their scale, versatility, and ability to perform well on numerous tasks without needing task-specific training from scratch.
About insitro
insitro is a machine learning-enabled drug discovery and development company creating a new approach for target and drug discovery. insitro is uncovering genetic targets and new therapeutic hypotheses by integrating multimodal data from human cohorts and cellular models with the power of AI and machine learning to increase the therapeutic probability of success. These insights provide the starting point for discovering new molecules, which are either built with in-house, AI-enabled drug discovery platforms or with partners that extend insitro’s impact. With more than $700 million in capital raised to date, insitro is building a “pipeline through platform” with a focus on metabolic disease and neuroscience. Approaching the clinic, insitro aims to deploy its AI models to run smaller, better powered trials, enrolling the patients who can benefit most. Learn more at insitro.com.
About Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is one of the leading providers of eye health services in the UK and a world class centre of excellence for ophthalmic research and education. Moorfields main focus is the treatment and care of NHS patients with a wide range of eye problems, from common complaints to rare conditions that require treatment not available elsewhere in the UK. Moorfields unique patient case-mix in serving 23 locations across Greater London combined with the number of people treated means that the hospital’s clinicians have expertise in discrete ophthalmic sub-specialties. The Trust also operates commercial divisions that provide care to private patients in both London and the Middle East. Together with the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, Moorfields is recognised as a leading centre of excellence in eye and vision research.
About the INSIGHT Health Data Research Hub at Moorfields
INSIGHT is the world’s largest ophthalmic imaging bioresource, with over 35 million eye images linked to clinical data. An NHS research initiative led by Moorfields in partnership with University Hospitals Birmingham, INSIGHT makes routinely collected anonymised patient eye data available for approved research that could lead to improvements in diagnosis, care and treatment of eye diseases, as well as systemic disease such as stroke and Alzheimer’s. INSIGHT’s mission is to improve healthcare for the benefit of patients and wider society by making it simpler for researchers to use large, anonymised sets of patient data in a safe and ethical way. INSIGHT has pioneered the concept Oculomics, using the eye as a window to understanding systemic health.
Contacts
For insitro:
Gwynne Oosterbaan
gwynne@insitro.com
Dan Budwick
dan@1abmedia.com
For INSIGHT at Moorfields:
Alex Black
INSIGHT Hub Programme, Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
alex.black3@nhs.net
