Nordic Life Science 1
connected world, where everything is instant and
information is abundant, there are still boundaries when it comes to knowledge exchange within R&D. These knowledge silos prevent patients from getting access to new treatments and also the industry from developing them as fast as they want. Knowledge Gate has created a solution where knowledge silos are removed and the company provides seamless access between those who need knowledge and those who have it. “We are also democratizing access to knowledge. Start-up companies with really brilliant ideas should have the same access as the largest pharma companies,” says Viktoriya Vasilenko, co-founder, Knowledge Gate. The importance of knowledge exchange is something that Viktoriya herself experienced just as the company was ready to take off. She became extremely sick, with scary symptoms and saw doctor after doctor. Finally the root of the problem was found and, luckily she was eligible for a very new treatment. “After communicating with the researchers responsible for my treatment, I realized how incredibly important it was to create a solution where knowledge can be freely exchanged, thereby accelerating the time for new treatments to become available. If the researchers had the possibility to receive feedback from the right experts, the time from research to available treatment would have been 5 to 6 years instead of 20 years,” she says. Viktoriya and her colleagues at Knowledge Gate are all very passionate about their work. “It is humbling to be able to work with the brightest minds this industry has to offer and get a sneak peek into their groundbreaking work,” says Viktoriya. The team represents 13 different countries, four religions, ten languages and an incredibly powerful combination of technical skills, commercial excellence and strong scientific backgrounds. A recently closed investment round of 5.5 million DKK has also enabled the company to further focus on company growth. Knowledge Gate utilizes artificial intelligence to identify experts, on both the research and the commercial side, on topics within life science, everything from medical research through market intelligence to regulatory matters. When these experts are onboard they are available as key opinion leaders and feedback providers, and Knowledge Gate takes care of the legal framework for customers to freely interact and access necessary critical knowledge. The compliance is automated and customers can openly search and interact with researchers, patients, physicians and commercial professionals. As an example, Viktoriya describes a Swiss organization that was working with CAR-T therapy for multiple myeloma and was struggling with cytokine release syndrome and neurotoxicity. “Through Knowledge Gate they were able to have very important conversations that moved them in an entirely new direction. They spoke with a researcher in California who was leading a first-inhuman clinical trial focusing on just this. The researcher was part of a team that developed a novel “switchable” CAR-T cell therapy that enables a functionally reversible on/off control for CAR-T cell activity for B cell malignancies,” she says. The organization also had successful conversations with a Norwegian physician, and a CEO of a very promising company doing research in China. “Because of a series of knowledge sharing conversations between the Swiss organization, an American researcher, a Norwegian physician and a Chinese business woman, cancer patients in Switzerland got a better chance at survival. In business terms, this organization was able to get answers that otherwise would have taken months and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, spent on research, very probably with mistakes as they spent time looking in the wrong direction,” says Viktoriya. NLS