The NIH is all set to give a ma­jor push to the med­i­cine AI com­mu­ni­ty.

As a part of its Bridge to Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence pro­gram (Bridge2AI), the NIH fund will in­vest $130 mil­lion over four years to pro­mote the use of AI in bio­med­ical and be­hav­ioral re­search.

The goal is to gen­er­ate new “flag­ship” da­ta sets and cre­ate best prac­tices for ma­chine learn­ing analy­sis.

While AI is used in the bio­med­ical and health­care space, the NIH said that its adop­tion is not up to mark. “The bio­med­ical re­search com­mu­ni­ty gen­er­ates a wealth of da­ta, but most of these da­ta are not suit­able for ma­chine learn­ing be­cause they are in­com­plete,” said the NIH on its web­site.

The agency wants to change that by gen­er­at­ing new bio­med­ical and be­hav­ioral da­ta sets that are eth­i­cal­ly sourced, trust­wor­thy, well-de­fined and ac­ces­si­ble, it added. The NIH-em­pha­sized ma­jor goal of the pro­gram is to en­sure AI and da­ta do not per­pet­u­ate in­equities.

“Gen­er­at­ing high-qual­i­ty eth­i­cal­ly sourced da­ta sets is cru­cial for en­abling the use of next-gen­er­a­tion AI tech­nolo­gies that trans­form how we do re­search,” NIH di­rec­tor Lawrence Tabak said in a press state­ment.

Lawrence Tabak

AI-ready da­ta sets have the po­ten­tial to un­rav­el some of the most press­ing chal­lenges in hu­man health — such as un­cov­er­ing how ge­net­ic, be­hav­ioral and en­vi­ron­men­tal fac­tors in­flu­ence a per­son’s phys­i­cal con­di­tion through­out their life, said the NIH.

Re­searchers at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia San Diego School of Med­i­cine, UCLA, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado Den­ver were cho­sen to lead the NIH Com­mon Fund’s Bridge2AI pro­gram.

DC District Court Judge Christopher Cooper today granted Vanda Pharma’s request to require the FDA to disclose more info on the complete response letter for its sleep disorder drug Hetlioz.

The melatonin receptor agonist is approved by the FDA to treat non-24-hour sleep-wake disorder, a circadian rhythm disorder. But in 2018 Vanda filed a supplemental application to market Hetlioz as a treatment for jet lag, which the FDA rejected in August 2019, with few details on what Vanda needed to correct course, according to the company.

Codiak BioSciences has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, spelling an end to the employment of most executives, including founder Doug Williams, as the biotech says it “expects to consummate a sale.”

The eight-year journey at Codiak is nearing an end with Williams; CFO Linda Bain; medical chief David Mauro; scientific head Sriram Sathyanarayanan; legal and compliance chief Yalonda Howze; and SVP of HR Nicole Barna all packing up their bags in the first few days of April. Chief technology officer Konstantin Konstantinov will stay.