Owkin Announces New Scientific Advisory Board Chaired by World-leading Precision Oncologist

French-American AI for medical research startup Owkin today appointed ten advisors to its Scientific Advisory Board, including professors from leading academic research hospitals across the world.

The Scientific Advisory Board will work closely with Owkin’s team to supercharge its mission to augment medical research. It will bolster Owkin’s clinical expertise, while strengthening and expanding Owkin’s ties with leading academic institutions and pharmaceutical partners across the world. It will also help to increase the number of hospitals and research centers benefitting from Owkin’s federated network.

The Scientific Advisory Board will be led by new chairwoman Professor Miriam Merad, Director of Precision Immunology Institute at Mount Sinai (PrIISM) and the Director of the Human Immune Monitoring Center at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

The Board consists of Professor Fabrice André, Professor Jean-Yves Blay, Professor Olivier Elemento, Professor Nicolas Girard, Professor Jakob Nikolas Kather, Professor Miriam Merad, Professor Raphaël Rousseau, Professor Roger Stupp, Professor Gilles Salles and Professor Shahrokh Shariat.

Owkin uses federated learning – an innovative machine learning framework that allows sensitive data to be analyzed without leaving its source – to enable faster, safer and more cost-efficient research collaboration, while crucially preserving the privacy of patient data.

Founded in 2016 by clinical hematologist Thomas Clozel MD and AI-for-biology pioneer Gilles Wainrib, Owkin now works with leading hospitals, research centers and pharmaceutical companies across the world. The company became a ‘unicorn’ in November 2021 through a $180 million investment from pharmaceutical company Sanofi.

Thomas Clozel MD, Co-founder and CEO of Owkin, said:

“Crucial to Owkin’s success thus far has been our emphasis on collaboration with scientists and clinicians at the very best academic, medical and research institutions.

“AI is not an end product – it is an interactive tool that enables new scientific and medical discoveries. It is amazing to be surrounded by the best scientists and physicians to do just that.”

“Owkin’s Scientific Advisory Board will help to turbocharge our work with researchers across the world, helping us to achieve our mission of using AI to find the right treatment for every patient.”

Owkin Scientific Advisory Board Chairwoman Professor Miriam Merad, Director of the Precision Immunology Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, said:

“I am excited to join Owkin’s Scientific Advisory Board to help bring a new era of AI tools to medicine. AI has the potential to significantly enhance the way that patients are treated and Owkin is at the forefront of this exciting field.”

Professor Shahrokh Shariat, Head of the Department of Urology at the Medical University of Vienna, said:

“Owkin combines the power of trials, labs and data sciences to converge towards the delivery of personalized value-based medicine. Thanks to Owkin’s sophisticated computation and inference, together we have generated insights, enabling us to reason and learn, and empowered our decision making.

“Owkin is already impacting healthcare, and it is hoped that these and future successes will transform urologic healthcare with the goal of eradicating suffering from urologic diseases.”

Professor Fabrice André, Director of Research at Gustave Roussy in Paris, said:

“Owkin is leading the use of AI for prediction and drug discovery in cancer. It has developed methods to detect predictive signals where the human brain can’t. Together, we developed a pathology tool to predict relapse in early stage breast cancer patients in one year, while we struggled for many years to do it with other teams.”