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NOVEMBER 30, 20 19Not many scientists get
solicited for photo ops, but for Daphne Koller it’s a
regular occurrence. “It happens at pretty much any
event that has tech people,” Koller says when asked
about one recent snapshot. “It’s a little awkward.
It’s not like I feel like this is something I deserve.”
Selfi e requests are just one sign of Koller’s star-
dom, earned from more than 20 years bridging
computer science, biology and education. She
chalked up a string of accolades along the way:
getting a master’s degree from Jerusalem’s He-
brew University at 18; becoming a Stanford Uni-
versity professor focused on machine learning at
26; winning, nearly a decade later, a Mac Arthur
“genius grant” for research that combined artifi -
cial intelligence and genomics; cofounding $1 bil-
lion (valuation) Coursera, an early platform to let
people around the world take university classes
for free.
The next act for this 51-year-old innovator: In-
sitro, a fi rm in South San Francisco that aims
to fi nd new drugs by sorting through masses of
data. If it succeeds, it will have overturned how
drugs get discovered.
Lab biologists typically focus on a few specifi c
proteins as drug targets. If those fail, data scientists
make suggestions for others to try. Insitro, on the
other hand, wants to collect much more data be-
fore the biologists go off on their hunt. It will le-
verage advances in bioengineering (such as Crispr
gene editing) and in software that enables comput-
ers to see things that escape humans.
Koller describes her aha moment this way:
“Machine learning is now doing amazing things
if you give it enough data. We fi nally have the op-
portunity to create biological data at scale.”
Insitro’s computational experts and biologists
work together to create lab experiments to pro-
duce massive custom data sets. Machine learning
models then fi nd patterns to suggest new tests
and potential therapies. Robotics like automat-
ed pipetting machines reduce human error. With
all this, Insitro can do “experiments in a matter ofweeks instead of years,” Koller says.
AI plus biology, her background, was a “marriage
made in heaven” for investors, she says. Within six
months Koller raised $100 million from ARCH
Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Foresite Capital,
Alphabet’s venture fund GV and Third Rock, with
Jeff Bezos and others joining later. In April, she
landed a deal with Gilead Sciences that gives Insi-
tro $15 million now with $1 billion to follow if it
helps fi nd a treatment for a deadly form of nonal-
coholic fatty liver disease. The disease is expected to
soon become the leading cause of liver transplants.
“There are very few individuals who understand
both sides of the beast,” says Mani Subramanian,
who heads liver disease clinical research at Gilead.
“The biology as well as the deep learning.”
Insitro’s future payouts from Gilead hang on
whether it can identify fi ve proteins that could be
targets for drugs and then whether targeting those
proteins leads to approved therapies for the liver
disease. The contingent payments, which include
revenue sharing from successful drugs, helped Insi-
tro earn a spot on Forbes’ inaugural AI 50 list of the
most promising artifi cial intelligence companies.
More than 20 other startups are chasing the
dream of faster, cheaper drug discovery through
AI. Among them are Notable Labs, with $55 mil-
lion of venture capital, and Verge Genomics, with
$36 million. Novartis has announced a fi ve-year
AI collaboration with Microsoft, and Merck and
GSK have startup partnerships as well.
Artifi cial intelligence does not make biology
easy. “I don’t think the platform can be magic,”
Koller says.
Before Insitro can reap rewards, a few hundred
thousand lab tests need to happen. Koller has the
energy. Bouncing around Insitro’s offi ce—she
gave away her desk chair to one of her 53 employ-
ees because she never used it—she moves from
a room named Macrophage (a white blood cell)
to one named Elastic Net (a data-modeling tech-
nique) to show off the latest lab equipment.
Big Pharma’s interest would seem to make In-
sitro a likely acquisition target if it hits pay dirt.
But Koller says she doesn’t want to see Insitro
“swallowed into the maw” of a larger organiza-
tion. She wants it to make its own branded drugs.
The ultimate goal is that the people asking for
photos ops will be healthier thanks to Insitro.
Koller says she hopes they come up to her and
say, “Because of you, I have my life back.”N
TECHNOLOGY—PRESCRIPTIONFORINNOVATIONDaphne Koller Cont.FINAL THOUGHT
“DATA TRUMPS EVERYTHING.”
—Josh Estelle, a lead engineer for Google TranslateHOW TO PLAY IT
According to
Gary Robinson
Quantum com-
puting and AI are
massive tailwinds
for healthcare
research and San
Diego’s Illumina
leads the way. Its
machines have
lowered the cost
of sequencing a
human genome
from $10 million
in 2007 to $1,000
and are chang-
ing how cancer
screening and
research is done.
“We are moving
from a world
where decisions
on which drugs
to give a patient
were primarily
made on edu-
cated guesses
to one where
they are made
on the basis of
data,” says Gary
Robinson, a port-
folio manager
at $260-billion-
in-assets Baillie
Giff ord. A recent
dip in sales
growth caused
Illumina shares to
drop by 25% from
record highs, but
Robinson shrugs
at the volatility.
“The healthcare
sector is large
and ineffi cient
and therefore it is
ripe for change,”
he says, “Illumina
is the primary
benefi ciary.”FHOW^TOPLAYIT^WRITTENBYANTOINE^ GARA;^PATRICK^ WELSHFOR^ FORBES