00:07All right, we're joined now by one of our reporters, Alexi. Alexi, what can you tell us?
00:15Yeah, I am joined right now by Emmanuel Frenéard. He is the Sanofis Global Head of the Digital Accelerators,
00:23the multinational pharmaceutical group is actively leveraging AI, of course, to enhance its services in several ways,
00:35from R&D, of course, to personalized medicine, to drug discovery as well, and development to clinical trial optimization.
00:45So first of all, Emmanuel, thank you so much for taking a little bit of time with us today for
00:50VT News.
00:51Could you tell me the importance of innovation in the health sector?
00:56We know that it has become extremely visible following, of course, the COVID pandemic.
01:02Could you tell me if it has accelerated R&D at Sanofi or has the company always been leading the
01:10way in innovation to respond to today's health needs?
01:14Good morning and welcome to the Sanofi booth, first of all. I'm happy to have you here.
01:19You know, if the pandemic taught us one thing is that we need to be faster, agile and more resilient
01:25because we all got caught.
01:28And so for us, you know, our mission is chasing the miracles of science to improve people's lives.
01:34That's the core of what Sanofi does. And R&D is the genesis of that, discovering new drugs that will
01:40eventually help people's lives.
01:41So we use our visual intelligence extensively in R&D for a number of things.
01:46One of them is drug discovery. How can you potentially find new molecules targeting, but also simulating what would happen
01:54in basically in silico before you go into inhuman.
01:57And that helps us accelerate the time it takes to create a new drug, because we all look at the
02:03safety profile.
02:04And then on the second part of it is we use it as well to model how you will get
02:09to clinical trials, because you know that for a drug to be approved, it has to go into clinical trials.
02:14And so all of that, we try to compact that as much as possible, because we realize there's a lot
02:19of unmet need.
02:20And our job is to make sure that people that suffer and struggle have those needs met.
02:26So, yes, we've used AI, we use digital, we use also our science, of course, at the heart of it,
02:33to accelerate the way we do things.
02:34And the pandemic has told us that we need to be more nimble, faster, more agile, because we never know.
02:41That's for sure. We never know. We never know. Yeah, that's for sure.
02:44So, could you... Oh, sorry about the little problem sound over here.
02:49So, talk us through how Sanofi uses AI in the research and development process especially.
02:56Yeah, so if you think about it, historically, R&D was a very manual process.
03:01It's a process of iteration, a lot of failures, unfortunately.
03:04You do a lot of experiments, and those experiments take time.
03:07And you look for certain cells, certain proteins, and you look for some creation of potential molecules.
03:13All of that used to be a human experimentation.
03:16Nowadays, with AI, and we partner with companies that help us out, we develop our own, we partner with companies,
03:22we've got our own AI platforms, but we're also very open-minded.
03:25We want to make sure that we have the best of the best working with us and working for us.
03:31And so we use AI. I'll give you an example.
03:33Now we're able to slash the time it takes to find a protein.
03:37Because we use recognition, graphic recognition to AI, to say, well, here it is.
03:42In the past, it would take you maybe days or weeks to find it.
03:45Now you find it in minutes.
03:46Because the computer is very powerful at doing that.
03:51And it's an entire cycle.
03:53We apply that.
03:55It might be for target identification.
03:57It might be for testing how a disease would react to a new molecule.
04:03And so we simulate that.
04:04We do that in oncology a lot.
04:06It's like we're going to do the package.
04:07Because you realize that people that have cancer have a really complex disease that we have to manage.
04:14And so we simulate would this molecule help them or not with real AI and machine learning models.
04:22So we'll do it across the spectrum of things.
04:25And we'll do it all the way to manufacturing, frankly.
04:27You talk about R&D, but it goes all the way to manufacturing.
04:30Yeah, of course.
04:32And so could you tell me as well, how is AI crucial towards bringing better and also faster medical treatments?
04:43You know, one thing that we're trying to do is we're trying to be as if almost as performance as
04:49a F1-1 team.
04:51We're trying to bring the complexity of AI plus the complexity of manufacturing drugs together.
05:00There's something new to it.
05:02We call it our evolution factories, a very modern factories that allow us to do biologics and vaccines in a
05:10very modular way.
05:11And we use AI to be able to predict what we need to produce in terms of drugs.
05:16So it comes from, we said, research, but also all the way to manufacturing.
05:20How would you predict what you need?
05:22How can you use a new way of manufacturing?
05:25How can you look at deviations automatically?
05:28How can you look at supply chain challenges?
05:31And so everywhere, our concept...
05:38...be the most AI pharma company that you'll know of.
05:43And we'll do it.
05:44But we'll do it in a responsible way.
05:45So we're very truthful to the process that AI has to be transparent and well understood.
05:52All right.
05:53Well, thank you so much for all these explanations.
05:56Well, apparently a lot of problems with the connection with the...
05:59But I guess we got the 100% of the message.
06:04So thank you so much, Emmanuel.
06:06And well, good luck for the VivaTech 2023 events.
06:09Thank you.
06:09It's been a real pleasure.
06:10Take good care.
06:11Thank you.
06:11Thank you.
06:12Thank you so much.
06:12Back to you, Optin.
06:13Thank you, Alexei.
06:14Fascinating stuff.
06:15We'll check in with you in a little bit.
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