BERG: Artificial Intelligence transforming the future of health

Slava Akmaev, SVP & Chief Analytics Officer

BERG is a Boston-based biopharmaceutical company focused on using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to guide therapeutic drug discovery, build better diagnostic tools, and to help enhance patient-care efforts.

“At BERG, we're passionate about bringing meaningful improvements to the lives of our patients,” says Slava Akmaev, Ph.D., Senior Vice President & Chief Analytics Officer. “We believe that patients are the key to discovering new treatments and that precision medicine will empower patients to better understand and improve their own health.”

BERG's AI-based Interrogative Biology^® platform combines patient biology with AI-based analytics to uncover the differences between healthy and sick cells, which guide the company’s therapeutic drug discovery, diagnostic, and health-care application development efforts. The platform utilizes individual patient data, as well as molecular data derived from human biological material collected in rigorously designed clinical studies through partnerships with leading academic and non-profit healthcare organizations. BERG is one of the few companies in the industry that goes beyond genomics in the effort to identify molecular biomarkers of disease progression, therapy response, and individual Patient Intelligence™.

Led by BERG’s primary product candidate, BPM 31510, the company has a robust product portfolio in oncology, endocrinology, and neurology. Data presented in April at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) demonstrates that BPM 31510 has boosted immune responses and potentially improved the outcomes of patients suffering from Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM), pancreatic cancer, and other metabolic cancers. The company’s mature assets in oncology are entering mid and late-stage clinical trials

With expertise in Artificial Intelligence and clinical informatics, BERG Analytics’ data scientists can help clients use their rich data to build predictive models

“These insights into the mechanism of action of BPM 31510 provide further validation for its clinical potential to preferentially treat patients with highly metabolic tumors, like pancreatic cancer and GBM,” BERG’s President & CEO, Niven Narain says. “We’re encouraged by the findings presented at AACR, especially in areas such as immuno-oncology, where novel methods to boost the immune system have the potential to significantly improve patient response and outcomes.”

When BERG is not working to improve patients’ lives in a direct fashion, its health-care analytics team – BERG Analytics – is using the BERG Artificial Intelligence Clinical Information Systems (bAIcis™) to help other organizations to enhance their patient-care efforts.

Healthcare payers and providers alike are challenged by the ongoing transition from fee-for-service payment models (that encourage high volumes of healthcare services) to new, value-based purchasing systems that reward quality and efficiency.

“At the same time as financial incentives and risks are changing in the health-care industry, a wide range of new, clinically relevant data sources are now becoming available,” says Akmaev. “Enterprise data warehouses are bursting with more information than ever, but most organizations are still struggling to learn how to mine these rich troves of data for insights that can transform the delivery of care.”

With expertise in Artificial Intelligence and clinical informatics, BERG Analytics’ data scientists can help clients use their rich data to build predictive models that will help them to precisely target patient populations for the most effective interventions.

Akmaev adds "Our bAIcis™ platform enables data scientists to convert myriads of data points into actionable clinical insight. Armed with these findings, many of our clients are able to successfully make the transition to value-based care models that deliver enhanced patient care.”