Noam Solomon: Bringing the Human Story to AI

Noam Solomon, CEO and co-founder, Immunai

AstraZeneca (AZ) recently announced that it signed an $18 million deal with Immunai, a NY-based technology company that is using artificial intelligence (AI) to map the human immune system. The Big Pharma company plans to use this technology during clinical trials for cancer medications to help with dose selection, elucidating mechanisms of action, identifying biomarkers, and developing analysis for patients who respond versus those that don’t respond. This new deal is the latest development in an ongoing relationship that Immunai has forged with AZ—and shows how major pharmaceutical companies are utilizing the technology in new and unexpected ways.

For Immunai’s CEO, Noam Solomon, the new arrangement with AZ marks another step closer to proving that his company’s AI technology can be used to solve problems with cancer treatment. Solomon, along with his team of co-founders, created Immunai in 2018. While the decision changed his life and the company has achieved much to date, Solomon says it’s a decision he may make differently today.

“At the time, I didn’t have a background in biotechnology, startups, management, or medicine,” he tells Pharmaceutical Executive. “I had to learn to pick up on these things for starting the company. It was a good thing because maybe knowing what I know today, I wouldn’t have been so reckless to start a biotechnology company.

“It’s a very challenging space for many reasons,” continues Solomon “Holding the cares of different players and interests at play here is something that I didn’t realize when we started. For me, there was a big unmet need for patients and people who are dying from cancer and suffering from autoimmune diseases. Can we develop a technology that can help this problem? I believed that we may be able to do so.”

Solomon adds that at the time he was helping form Immunai, he didn’t take into consideration all of the aspects that go into starting a business in the complex life sciences setting. He says he simply wasn’t aware of everything that would go into starting a biotech company.

“Most people that found a company feel like it’s something that they have to do,” explains Solomon. “If you don’t feel like you must found a company, then don’t do it. The friction and the punches you get in your face along the way are going to pull you to the ground. It’s only if you’re doing something that you feel you have to do that you’ll figure out a way to stand up again and keep fighting. It’s a fight all the way through and founders need to know is that the only promise you have when starting a company is that it’s going to be difficult.”

As Solomon alluded to, he didn’t start his career in the pharmaceutical or biotech fields. The Israeli-born and raised executive says that he actually wanted to be a mathematician since he was 8-years-old. He first attended university at age 14 and earned his bachelor’s degree by the age of 19. He joined the Israeli defense forces, where he worked as a machine-learning engineer and algorithms developer for several years. He continued his education and eventually came to the US where he earned his post-doctorate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“Through my time in the Cambridge, Mass., area, I met a few interesting people who became my co-founders at Immunai,” says Solomon. “The story was that I had a background in mathematics, machine-learning, and business science, but I had no experience with biotechnology or medicine. I already figured out that I was interested in starting something, but what that would be was a big open question in my mind.”

TRAGEDY TARGETS VISION

Solomon was inspired by the personal story of Immunai co-founder Voloch, its chief technology officer at the time, whose grandfather was undergoing treatment for cancer.

“I started digging into this problem and became more and more interested in if we could use AI to improve patient treatments for cancer,” says Solomon.“Unfortunately, my colleague’s grandfather died two years after we started the company. During these past six years, I’ve heard more and more stories about how big a problem this is. Some of these stories have been very close to my heart. My wife’s aunt died of breast cancer a few years ago and one of our first employees died of pancreatic cancer a few years ago, too. It became a personal problem.”

Solomon describes his wife’s aunt’s passing as something that was very difficult for the family, not just when she passed, but starting several months beforehand. All these experiences revealed to Solomon that his goals with Immunai weren’t just business-related; they were personal. He wanted to do his part to help solve problems with the heinous disease that were impacting people again and again.

“It became even clearer to me, it compounded over one case to another,” he says. “I’m more and more exposed to how big the problem is. What really resonated with me then was the question of ‘what am I going to do with these feelings?’ I decided to make sure that Immunai was going to succeed even further because we want to improve patient outcomes. Being able to translate the hardships that you have into being even more committed to the cause is something that will help you find the motivation to get the mission done.

“We have a very committed team and I’m most proud of that,” continues Solomon. “I was lucky in bringing the most talented people on earth to not just work at Immunai but also to be passionate about our mission.”

THE AI EXPANSION

For a technology company developing AI tools and platforms, the past few years have been very exciting. While machine learning and algorithms have been around for many years, they have grabbed the spotlight over the past few years in particular. Now, every major company is asking what’s possible with AI and where it can be incorporated into their processes.

“For people that are coming from computer science, we’ve spent the past 15 years watching the growing evolution of what AI is and what it can do,” Solomon tells Pharm Exec. “It started with computer vision and then advanced to text, before resulting in the explosion that we’ve seen during the past two to three years. It’s getting everywhere. Everybody is already worried about their profession and asking, ‘is AI going to take my job away from me in a few years?’

“In 2015 or 2016, when I was in university, I saw how AI was already superior to a lot of disciplines in computer science that, until then, needed to have the involvement of professional physicists, mathematicians, or other kinds of scientists,” says Solomon. “Now, AI is taking over. This was already in the making for nine to 10 years, but now it’s becoming more household-recognized, especially for conversational AI. I think it’s going to expand even further.”

Immunai’s work eventually caught the eye of AZ. Naturally, this isn’t an easy process, as Solomon notes. Research-focused technology companies are eager to partner with Big Pharma organizations, who are often positioned to invest significant dollars and resources into clinical programs. With many software specialists competing for their attention, businesses, obviously, need to have a plan to stand out.

“My head of business development likes to say that trust is consistency all the time,” says Solomon. “The secret for our success with AstraZeneca and other pharma companies is just being consistent all of the time. Initially, every pharma company is going to be skeptical that you can do what you say you can, and you need to figure out a way to get an opportunity to do just that. Remember that the first contract signed is just getting your foot in the door; now you need to actually get in the room and deliver.”

Solomon says Immunai strives for a philosophy of under-promising and over-delivering.

“We’re always doing everything we can to meet the highest expectations,” he adds. “We have a good track record, but getting them to notice you is one thing. Getting them to partner with you takes time, and you need patience. You must show data and tell them what you’re going to do and delivering that. If they’re skeptical, you can do it with other partners and then come back a year later and show your results.”

Solomon says it took over a year of communication for Immunai to sign its first contract with AZ. Since then, according to the executive, Immunai has built a strong relationship with the larger company.

“What we announced [recently] is part of a continued relationship we have with them,” he says “We have been working with AstraZeneca for two years now. We’ve been on their radar for more than three years, but it took us more than a year to start the first project, which expanded to another project, which has now expanded into yet another project. We have great momentum because we were able to provide actionable insights. I don’t want to speak for their oncology and clinical groups, but I’m very optimistic that we can provide value for their programs.”

DECODING IMMUNITY

Immunai’s work is centered around mapping the human immune system. According to Solomon, this involves mapping patients’ responses to treatments in oncology and autoimmune diseases. This involves collecting data at multiple points: before treatment, the onset of the disease, and then multiple times after treatment at specific points in time. This helps analysts learn and measure the changes that happen within the immune system both as the disease progresses and treatment begins.

“I would say the mapping of the immune system is done by mapping the mechanisms of action and resistance to different therapeutics that we’re measuring for different drugs,” explains Solomon. “Every project that we do is essentially applying our engine with a starting mechanism of resistance for a drug that our partners have and then gleaning insights that can make the drugs better during clinical trials.”

He cites two application examples: dose selection to increase success and avoid toxicity, and choosing the optimal indication to target—understanding that a single compound can be directed to interact with different types of cancer.

“Which combination agents do you want to give the drug with, such as chemotherapy A, chemotherapy B, or anti-conjugate C?” says Solomon. “So choosing those combination agents is a critical piece of getting an effective treatment.”

The most complex insight from the process that can be put into action is determining which patients should receive certain treatments and which ones should be excluded. According to Solomon, this inclusion and exclusion data is critical for getting a drug approved. It’s important to know which patients may potentially have a toxic event and how serious those events may turn out. By mapping the immune system, Solomon believes that drug developers will have a better chance of identifying these patients before any doses are administered.

“We’re working with our partners in every stage,” Solomon says, “from late R&D to Phase I, II, and III. As you can imagine, the Phase II and III clinical trials are the interesting ones because that’s where all of the money is being invested. That’s where there is a lot of possibility to have a winner in the race, or lose a lot of money.”

For Solomon, the goal of Immunai is to provide insights that can impact clinical development on a practical level. It’s one thing to collect data and provide analysis, it’s another to actually be able to improve the clinical trial process. AI simplifies the process and allows for more high-resolution, digital solutions to be discovered.

“With AI, you’re able to build very robust and complex AI models, and they’re going to learn for you what you need to find in the data; the only thing you need is a lot of data,” Solomon tells Pharmaceutical Executive. “I knew in 2018, with my team and co-founders, that if we had a machine that allowed us to do a lot of sequencing with a lot of patient samples, we could build a map of the human immune system.”