Panel Discussion. Frontiers of Drug Discovery: Will Big Tech Surpass Big Pharma?
Friday 26th September 3-4pm BST; 10-11am ET; 4-5pm CEST; 7-8am PT
Big Tech is discovering drugs, publishing novel methods, and winning Nobel prizes. Will this field outpace big pharma in the future discovery landscape?
Join our expert panel from top pharma and Big Tech organizations to discuss the opportunities, pitfalls, and possible collaboration opportunities, that Big Tech will bring to the drug discovery sector.
Part of a series of events celebrating 60 years of the Cambridge Structural Database. The world’s largest database of small-molecule organic and metal-organic structures. All are experimentally determined, fully curated, and used by thousands of scientists globally.
Reserve your Place
The Panellists
- (Chair) John Conway – Chief Visioneer Officer, 20/15 Visioneers
- Professor Charlotte Deane – Executive Chair at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
- Dr Anne Goupil – Dassault Systèmes
- Darren Green – Director, DesignPlus Cheminformatics Consultants Ltd
- Steve St-Gallay – Senior Principal Scientist, MSD
- Dr Bojana Popovic – The CCDC
- Joe Donahue – Life Sciences Entrepreneur
- Andreas Bender – Khalifa University
- Dr Anthony Bradley – University of Liverpool
Who Should Attend?
- Leaders in Science, Pharmaceutical, and Big Tech organizations
- Chief Technical Officers
- Chief Data Officers
- Chief Scientific Officers
- Data Quality Managers
- Bioinformatics and Cheminformatics Scientists and Leaders
- AI/ML Scientists
- Data Scientists
- Drug Discovery Data Specialists
The Discussion.
To include (if time permits!):
- Nobel prize 2024 went to Google DeepMind; other tech players are also entering pharma (e.g. IBM, Meta). Where will future innovation primarily come from?
- Discussion of the pharma advantages.
- Discussion of the Big Tech advantage.
- What factors are key to fostering innovation? Which environment has those?
- Are regulatory requirements likely to help or hinder either side?
- Does the origin of innovation matter?
- How do both sides define and measure innovation?
- How does the availability of public and proprietary data impact the balance?
- Are we likely to see collaboration or competition in this space?
- How can governments and regulators prioritize patient outcomes regardless of where discoveries come from?
Register your place.
Friday 26th September 2025
3pm BST (London, Dublin, Edinburgh, Lisbon)
10am ET (Boston, New York, Ontario)
4pm CEST (Berlin, Brussels, Rome, Warsaw)
7am PT (San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver)