A novel predictor for multiple taste sensations based on a multi-objective Machine Learning method was published by InSyBio in the NPJ Science of Food journal of the Springer Nature publishing company (https://rdcu.be/dOVbA). This new predictor, namely Virtuous Multi-Taste, was developed in collaboration with a team of exceptional researchers from Politecnico di Torino (Italy), Industrial Systems Institute (Greece) and Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence (Switzerland) in the framework of VIRTUOUS Project, an EU Horizon 2020 program.
This work provides a valuable tool for predicting the taste of chemical compounds based on their most important physiochemical properties. The tool is designed to analyze different compounds and provide as output the percentage of contribution of four different tastes- sweet, umami, bitter and other- to the overall taste of each query compound. The multi-class predictor was created based on InSyBio’s multi-objective evolutionary optimization algorithm that is implemented in InSyBio Suite, showcasing the wide range of applications of InSyBio’s biomarker discovery and predictive analytic algorithms and pipelines.
The Virtuous Multi-Taste tool will accelerate taste perception research by providing nutrition and pharmaceutical companies and laboratories with a much-needed tool for compound design based on taste. The tool itself can be accessed through a web-based interface: https://virtuous.isi.gr/#/virtuous-multitaste.
Image: (a) The Virtuous Multi-Taste web-based interface and the result of compound search indicating (b) each compound’s structure and (c) the percentage of each taste’s representation in the final compound taste.
The vision of the Virtuous project, as previously stated by Dr. Marco Agostino Deriu, was to “build an intelligent machine able to decrypt a sensation by modelling the biophysical architecture of our body, covering all required competencies for this ambitious challenge, starting from molecular and multiscale modelling techniques, to artificial intelligence algorithms; experimental facilities to analyze natural product typical of the Mediterranean diet such as wine and oil“
Labros Digonis, CEO of InSyBio, commented on the importance of the tool:
“We are proud of acquiring, at last, the ability to predict the taste of chemical compounds based on their physiochemical properties. The potential to revolutionize multiple industries by improving product development processes, enhancing consumer satisfaction and fostering innovation in taste-related research is inherent to this revolutionary discovery and is here to stay. We will be seeing a lot of new, cost-efficient, more targeted and senses-satisfying products based on this. Congratulations to the pioneer team!”
About Virtuous: The EU-funded VIRTUOUS project (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) – https://virtuoush2020.com/) is dedicated to the development of a virtual tongue made by an integrated computational framework that can screen food for natural components by binding taste receptors. This international consortium includes eight academic and industry participants from four European countries. Using a variety of computational and experimental data, partners plan to create an algorithm for the prediction of the organoleptic profile of the food based on its chemical composition. The potential application of this platform as a taste predictor is in the food industry, modern precision agriculture, and as a link to neuroscience for taste determination.
About InSyBio: InSyBio is an international pioneer bioinformatics revolutionizing the medical field, clinical trials and food/nutrition industries through targeted biomarker discovery and highly-accurate predictive analytics.
InSyBio solutions provide the R&D departments of Pharma, Research Institutes and Food/Nutrition companies, with the means both analytically and computationally, to meet their challenging research and innovation goals (such as robust biomarker discovery and accurate predictive models). This is done through a sophisticated, software-as-a-service, machine learning platform which comprehensively integrates multi-omics data reducing the number of samples and additional validation experiments needed. Since 2013, InSyBio has worked with hundreds of academics, large and small companies, hospitals and research centers allowing them to succeed in their biomarker discovery tasks with an increase of at least 10% in predictive accuracy and decrease of at least 80% in overall time and cost.
Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death globally, with 17.9 million annual deaths. InSyBio has partnered with Syndesis, the data and technology catalyst to a truly global, multi-continent network of healthcare and life sciences organizations, to address this enormous global health issue.
We focused on two specific heart diseases, congestive heart failure (CHF) and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM). Congestive heart failure (CHF), or heart failure, is a long-term condition characterized by the inability of the myocardium to meet the body’s blood supply needs. Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) is a genetic heart muscle disease that causes alterations in heart’s structure. It is associated with high mortality due to sudden cardiac arrest and frequently requires heart transplant. When faced with patients suffering from CHF or HCM, doctors are often challenged in ensuring the optimal therapeutic protocol that reduces the risk of dangerous complications or death.
Existing clinical scores (Qrisk2, SCORE, Framingham) perform poorly in predicting 5-year mortality and short-term outcome (<60% Area Under the Curve, AUC) in both disease areas. Artificial Intelligence can provide significant support in such clinical decisions, by predicting outcomes for patients based on certain therapeutic protocols.
PrecisionCHF and PrecisionHCM
InSyBio analyzed a highly curated cardiovascular data set using Syntium, Syndesis Health’s data platform of anonymized clinical data, in order to develop two Precision Medicine Tools based on Artificial Intelligence. These tools predict CHF and HCM risk and can help to reduce it by recommending changes to the therapeutic protocol of the patients suffering from these diseases.
The AI tools – “PrecisionCHF” and “PrecisionHCM” – were trained on data from 1044 patients hospitalized with Congestive Heart Failure (CHF) and 255 Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) patients with full clinical annotation and outcomes mined from Syntium.
Following training on the data, the AI tools performed impressively well: PrecisionCHF was able to predict 5-year mortality for CHF with 75% AUC, while PrecisionHCM was able to predict short term outcome (i.e. mortality until discharge) with 97% AUC. Using the AI tools 37% of CHF and 28% of HCM patients at risk can substantially reduce their risk (>5% reduction) with the optimization of their medication plan. Moreover, 12% of the rest of CHF and 11% of the rest of HCM who are not at risk can further reduce their risk by at least 5%.
The collaboration between InSyBio and Syndesis has demonstrated the enormous value of training AI pipelines for medical applications using relatively “small” but highly curated and validated clinical data, and the importance of innovative platforms such as InSyBio Diagnostics Platform and Syntium.
About InSyBio. InSyBio is an international pioneer biotechnology company revolutionizing the medical field through targeted biomarker discovery, highly accurate predictive analytics and the development of personalization tests for drugs. Its solutions provide the R&D departments of Pharma and Research Institutes with the means to meet their most challenging research and innovation goals. This is done through a sophisticated, software-as-a-service, machine learning platform which comprehensively integrates multi-omics and clinical data, thus reducing the number of samples and additional validation experiments needed. Since 2013, InSyBio has worked with hundreds of academics, large and small companies, hospitals, and research centres allowing them to succeed in their biomarker discovery tasks with an increase of at least 10% in predictive accuracy and a decrease of at least 80% in overall time and cost.
Single-cell RNA sequencing is a powerful genomic method used to detect and analyze RNA molecules in biological samples at a single-cell level. It has proven successful in studying cell composition, proliferation, and migration. However, analyzing the data presents challenges due to standardization issues, data scarcity, and difficulties in integrating datasets with other sequencing technologies.
The new version of InSyBio Suite introduces new functionalities and toolboxes within the InSyBio ncRNAseq tool for streamlining and optimizing the processing of single-cell RNA-sequencing data and performing all required analyses to facilitate the discovery of biomarkers, cell trajectories, cell-cell communication patterns overcoming the challenges of existing workflows and tools.
In particular, the following functionalities are enabled/supported in the new version of InSyBio ncRNAseq tool:
optimized analysis from raw data simplifying the process and ability to be run by non-bioinformatics experts.
Efficient integration of multiple scRNAseq datasets, removing efficiently the technical biases and maintaining biological variability.
Cell-deconvolution of bulk transcriptomics and proteomics data using scRNAseq data.
Discovery and documentation of cell-cell communication patterns using CellChat workflow.
Discovery of single-cell trajectories and RNA-velocity patterns using scVelo workflow
Custom figure preparation and documented bioinformatics analysis integrated with additional tools of InSyBio Suite for biomarker discovery, network and AI/ML analysis.
The CEO of InSyBio, Labros Digonis, stated: “In the past 5 years, scRNAseq data have been extensively used in the literature but their analysis is difficult, demanding and it is very easy to get misleading results if not conducted by a coding and bioinformatics expert. In line with our company’s priorities, the new version of InSyBio Suite democratizes the use of such data by non-bioinformatics experts allowing the people who generate the data to perform elaborate analytics and get the most out of their data using our user-friendly, web-based platform.”
InSyBio is offering a one-month free license to use InSyBio Suite including the new version of InSyBio ncRNAseq tool. Request your free trial now by completing a simple form at: Get a free one month license of InSyBio Suite.
About InSyBio. InSyBio is an international pioneer biotechnology company revolutionizing the medical field through targeted biomarker discovery, highly accurate predictive analytics and the development of personalization tests for drugs. Its solutions provide the R&D departments of Pharma and Research Institutes with the means to meet their most challenging research and innovation goals. This is done through a sophisticated, software-as-a-service, machine learning platform which comprehensively integrates multi-omics and clinical data, thus reducing the number of samples and additional validation experiments needed. Since 2013, InSyBio has worked with hundreds of academics, large and small companies, hospitals, and research centres allowing them to succeed in their biomarker discovery tasks with an increase of at least 10% in predictive accuracy and a decrease of at least 80% in overall time and cost.
Barcelona, October 25th, 2023: CPHI Barcelona announced the winners of the prestigious 2023 CPHI Pharma Awards. The awards recognise outstanding achievements and contributions from the global pharma industry and supply chain across 12 wide-ranging categories. InSyBio won the best Start-Up Initiative in Pharma for 2023.
CPHI is the biggest worldwide exhibition and event for the Pharma Industry and is organised annually. The CPHI Pharma Awards recognise progress and innovation across the pharma supply chain. The details about the CPHI awards and the awarded companies can be found at CPHI Awards.
In the CPHI awards 2023 press release (https://www.pharmiweb.com/press-release/2023-10-26/cphi-pharma-award-winners-2023), it is mentioned that: “InSyBio impressed the judges reviewing the brand-new Start-Up Initiative category for its ability to revolutionize the medical field, clinical trials and food/nutrition industries through its targeted biomarker discovery. They have developed highly accurate predictive analytics enabling personalization of tests for drugs, nutraceuticals and nutrition products. Its solutions provide the R&D departments of Pharma, Research Institutes and Food/Nutrition companies with the means both analytically and computationally to meet their challenging research and innovation goals.”
Our CEO, Labros Digonis who received the award stated: “This award is a recognition of the hard work of our team in the past years to develop and commercialize a biomedical data analysis platform that could really expedite and speed up research in Pharma and Nutrition and eventually save lives. The CPHI event through the award as well as through our presence and exhibition in the start-up market, gave us the opportunity to connect with many pharma and nutraceutical product companies. We are looking forward to forming strong alliances that will lead to the development of personalized medicine and nutrition solutions”.
About InSyBio. InSyBio is an international pioneer biotechnology company revolutionizing the medical field through targeted biomarker discovery, highly accurate predictive analytics and the development of personalization tests for drugs. Its solutions provide the R&D departments of Pharma and Research Institutes with the means to meet their most challenging research and innovation goals. This is done through a sophisticated, software-as-a-service, machine learning platform which comprehensively integrates multi-omics and clinical data, thus reducing the number of samples and additional validation experiments needed. Since 2013, InSyBio has worked with hundreds of academics, large and small companies, hospitals, and research centres allowing them to succeed in their biomarker discovery tasks with an increase of at least 10% in predictive accuracy and a decrease of at least 80% in overall time and cost.
InSyBio, a leading biotechnology company that has developed a suite of advanced AI tools for biomarker discovery in clinical and multi-omics data, has announced a strategic partnership with Syndesis Health, a leader in global real-world evidence. The partnership aims to leverage the clinical and genomic data on Syntium, Syndesis’ data platform of global healthcare data, to accelerate research and development in several therapeutic areas, including cardiovascular health, oncology, and rare diseases.
The importance of biomarkers
Biomarkers are body characteristics that can be measured, such as the biological molecules found in bodily fluids or tissues, including DNA, antibodies, proteins, or other smaller molecules. They are necessary to predict the effectiveness of drugs and patient outcomes; however, biomarker discovery is a very complex and costly process that often results in poor or inaccurate outcomes due to the use of disparate tools and datasets, and the high complexity of high-throughput -omics data.
InSyBio’s platform simplifies and accelerates the process of biomarker discovery by providing a single, highly accurate, and effective processing pipeline that uses machine learning to analyze biodata. Syntium’s longitudinal datasets, which include clinical, genomic, and other data, are ideal for applying InSyBio’s suite of tools in biomarker discovery. Combining Syntium data with InSyBio’s platform will create a unique opportunity for biopharma and diagnostic companies to uncover breakthrough discoveries with the potential to vastly improve global patient outcomes.
“Precision medicine is still in its infancy and many patients are misdiagnosed or do not get the most beneficial treatment for them. The wealth of Syntium’s data sets when harnessed by our automatic AI-driven technology holds the potential to upend the medical field practices, and highly impact overall healthcare quality at national and international levels. We are looking forward to working with the innovative team of Syndesis Health“, said Labros Digonis, InSyBio CEO.
“We are incredibly excited to embark on this partnership with InSyBio to enable biomarker discovery for cutting-edge healthcare innovation”, said Josh Sutton, Syndesis Health CEO. “Together we seek to raise the bar for global health research and innovation in service of patients worldwide.”
About Syndesis Health. Syndesis Health is the data and technology catalyst to a multi-continent network of healthcare and life sciences organizations. Its primary aim is to enhance global health outcomes and equity through its secure data platform, Syntium, and the Syndesis Health Network, a member community promoting research collaboration, information sharing, and access to common tools. Visit https://syndesis.com to learn more.
About InSyBio. InSyBio is an international pioneer biotechnology company revolutionizing the medical field through targeted biomarker discovery, highly accurate predictive analytics and the development of personalization tests for drugs. Its solutions provide the R&D departments of Pharma and Research Institutes with the means to meet their most challenging research and innovation goals. This is done through a sophisticated, software-as-a-service, machine learning platform which comprehensively integrates multi-omics and clinical data, thus reducing the number of samples and additional validation experiments needed. Since 2013, InSyBio has worked with hundreds of academics, large and small companies, hospitals, and research centres allowing them to succeed in their biomarker discovery tasks with an increase of at least 10% in predictive accuracy and a decrease of at least 80% in overall time and cost. Visit http://www.insybio.com for more information.
An increasing number of pharma and academic labs are getting access to multi-omics and multi-modal datasets. However, their processing requires multiple tools, while network analytics and data visualization can become challenging considering the high dimensionality, complexity and the presence of mutual information among different omics technologies. Moreover, predictive analytics using multi-omics data suffers from the curse of dimensionality and its performance is highly affected by data missingness and class imbalance leading to reduced reproducibility and classification metrics. With previous versions of InSyBio Suite. we have simplified multi-omics analysis providing optimized pipelines for preprocessing omics data and network and machine learning methods for the identification of biomarkers and training and testing predicting models.
The newly introduced version (version 3.1) of InSyBio Suite:
Αllows for the first time the reconstruction and analysis of multi-omics networks (InSyBio BioNets),
Provides an interactive environment for network visualization allowing the user-friendly projection of differential expression results on networks and their customization to summarize additional information and characterisation of the nodes (InSyBio BioNets).
Introduces the use of Adaptive Boosting for solving the class imbalance problem in predictive analytics for biomarker discovery by expanding the dataset with technical data samples newar the classification hyperplane (InSyBio Biomarkers).
About InSyBio: InSyBio is an international pioneer biotechnology company revolutionizing the medical field, clinical trials and food/nutrition industries through targeted biomarker discovery, highly-accurate predictive analytics and the development of personalization tests for drugs, nutraceuticals and nutrition products.
Its solutions provide the R&D departments of Pharma, Research Institutes and Food/Nutrition companies, with the means both analytically and computationally to meet their challenging research and innovation goals (such as robust biomarker discovery and accurate predictive models). This is done through a sophisticated, software-as-a-service, machine learning platform which comprehensively integrates multi-omics data reducing the number of samples and additional validation experiments needed. Since 2013, InSyBio has worked with hundreds of academics, large and small companies, hospitals and research centers allowing them to succeed in their biomarker discovery tasks with an increase of at least 10% in predictive accuracy and a decrease of at least 80% in overall time and cost.
Visit www.insybio.com to see how InSyBio can help you reach your R&D goals in the era of Precision Medicine and Nutrition. For more News visit our InSyBio Blog.
Fitly Health has partnered with InSyBio to deliver life-changing outcomes for patients and employees with metabolic disorders who need to lose weight. Everyone has a unique metabolism and research now shows that our metabolic health is largely affected by diet-influenced changes to our gut microbiome. In other words, existing dietary interventions would be more effective in the long-term if practitioners and dietitians first understood the type of proverbial “fuel” that’s best suited for each individual patient. Namely their gut biomarkers. It’s like telling every vehicle owner they should go to the gas pump and fill their tank up with regular fuel vs mid-grade or premium, but the reality is that most of us require premium fuel. Foods that are diverse in micronutrients, phytonutrients, and fibers needed to rebuild and sustain a healthy gut environment and fuel-efficient body.
This is why Fitly Health & InSyBio have partnered to create the world’s first “Metabolic AI™” program that’s powered by gut microbiome analysis, predictive generative AI, precision nutrition tracking, and virtual coaching for patients diagnosed with metabolic syndrome, prediabetes, and Type 2 diabetes for starters. Patients will also be incentivized to with financial incentives and rewards for adherence and completion of the 12-month program.
Fitly Health, a Miami-based precision nutrition startup, is the brain-child of Anthony Ortiz, a serial inventor who also created SmartPlate (https://getsmartplate.com/food-tracker), the world’s smartest food tracker that has been featured in the likes of Forbes, Shark Tank, and Times of London. InSyBio (www.insybio.com) is a multi-awarded international pioneer biotechnology company expediting biomarker discovery and predictive analytics for precision medicine and nutrition applications.
“I believe the future of medicine, wellbeing, and longevity will largely depend upon the diversity and health of our gut. As a proven disruptor in precision medicine and nutrition through biomarker discovery, we couldn’t be more excited to partner with Labros, Kostas, and the illustrious team at InSyBio.” said Anthony Ortiz, CEO at Fitly Health.
“Our synergy with Fitly Health, and their unique product (SmartPlate), presents a unique opportunity for us to bring our technology into the service of precision nutrition to harness the power of AI and the gut microbiome. Precision medicine and nutrition is the enabler of better health for everyone. Efficient biomarker discovery and training of accurate outcome prediction models have been traditionally a bottleneck in precision medicine and nutrition, but our synergy with Fitly Health offers an innovative solution for this problem. We are looking forward to this exciting endeavour and we envisage a fruitful collaboration that will improve the health of millions of patients worldwide and allow technology to positively disrupt the way we eat”, stated Labros Digonis, CEO of InSyBio.
About InSyBio: InSyBio is an international pioneer biotechnology company revolutionizing the medical field, clinical trials and food/nutrition industries through targeted biomarker discovery, highly-accurate predictive analytics and the development of personalization tests for drugs, nutraceuticals and nutrition products.
Its solutions provide the R&D departments of Pharma, Research Institutes and Food/Nutrition companies, with the means both analytically and computationally to meet their challenging research and innovation goals (such as robust biomarker discovery and accurate predictive models). This is done through a sophisticated, software-as-a-service, machine learning platform which comprehensively integrates multi-omics data reducing the number of samples and additional validation experiments needed. Since 2013, InSyBio has worked with hundreds of academics, large and small companies, hospitals and research centers allowing them to succeed in their biomarker discovery tasks with an increase of at least 10% in predictive accuracy and a decrease of at least 80% in overall time and cost.
Visit www.insybio.com to see how InSyBio can help you reach your R&D goals in the era of Precision Medicine and Nutrition. For more News visit our InSyBio Blog.
Understanding the underlined cellular mechanisms of human taste is an essential step for designing new food products and for improving the taste of food, nutraceutical, food supplements and even pharmaceutical products. Moreover, taste mechanisms have been evolutionary linked with protective mechanisms against hazardous compounds, thus understanding how taste works at a molecular level and its top-down effects can trigger the discovery of new therapeutic methods or identify potential novel therapeutic effects for compounds of known taste.
Fig. 1. Summary Figure of Taste Receptors and their Features. This Figure was generatedby modifying figures from Pallante et al., 2021. 3D structure information is as follows: (a) Sweet: 3D molecular representation of the sweet receptor, in purple the TAS1R2 and blue the TAS1R3. The structure consists of the Venus flytrap module (VFTM) with the two lobes (LB1 and LB2), the cysteine-rich domain (CRD) and the transmembrane domain (TMD). (b) Umami: 3D molecular representation of one of the main umami receptor candidates, in green the TAS1R1 and blue the TAS1R3. The structure consists of the Venus flytrap module (VFTM) with the two lobes (LB1 and LB2), the cysteine-rich domain (CRD) and the transmembrane domain (TMD). (c) Bitter: 3D homology model of the TAS2R3 bitter receptor, (d) Salty: Representation of the 3D molecular structure of the trimeric ENaC, (e) Sour: Frontal view of the 3D molecular structure of OTOP1. Each subunit is formed by two structurally homologous domains, i.e. the N domain (light shade) and C domain (dark shade)
Taste is a multifactorial and complex procedure, involving pathways and interactions between a wide range of ligands and proteins. The first step of the taste perception process is the interplay between the chemical components of the food and a specific type of protein intracellular receptors, called taste receptors (taste receptor cells – TRCs). Taste receptors can be found in specialized cells called taste buds, organized in epithelial structures called papillae and can be found in areas like the oral mucosa and the tongue. But taste receptors can be found in other places too, for example in the outermost parts of the digestive system, i.e. larynx and upper esophagus. Sweet receptors (T1R2/T1R3) can, also, be found in the brain, heart, kidney, bladder, nasal respiratory epithelium, gut, pancreas etc., where they play an important metabolic role. What is more, taste receptors do not all belong to the same category. More specifically, sweet and umami taste receptors belong to the G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) category, while on the other hand, ion channels mediate sour and salty taste due to the presence of ions. It is, therefore, apparent that there can be a fascinating but complex network of interactions between the many different types of ligands present in the food and the different types of receptors of the human gustatory system.
Sweet and Umami tastes arise through the recognition of ligands from the GPCR type of receptors. To become more definite, sweet taste receptors are a product of the heterodimerization between TAS1R2 and TAS1R3, thus forming a GCPR that belongs to the GCPR- C family. This receptor recognizes natural sugars (e.g. glucose), artificial sweeteners (e.g. aspartame), sweet proteins (e.g. brazzein) and D-amino acids (e.g. D-Phenylalanine). Umami taste receptors, also arise from the dimerization of two GCPRs, TAS1R1 and TAS1R3, which interact with a wide variety of chemical substances such as amino acids, dipeptide and tripeptides, nucleotide enhancers and organic acids. The TAS1R1-TAS1R3 receptors also belong to the GCPR- C family.
On the other hand, salty and bitter receptors consist of a single type of receptor. Salty taste is mediated through the ENaC receptor, which allows the intracellular passage of Na+ ions. These ions are which, in turn, initiate the perception of saltiness from the gustatory system. The taste receptor type 2 family of GPCRs (TAS2Rs) are the receptors responsible for bitter taste. They belong to the F or A class of GPCRs. Monomeric TAS2Rs (specifically TAS2R10, TAS2R14 and TAS2R46) recognize about one-third of all bitter compounds (such as Diphenidol, Lupolon, Quinine, Benzoin, Arborescin etc.), thus the need for heterodimerization may not be necessary. But in vitro experiments have demonstrated that TAS2Rs are able to form oligomers through homo- and heterodimerization, which may imply that the interactions between TAS2Rs play a role in bitter taste perception (Behrens & Meyerhof, 2018).
Sour taste perception is achieved through the OTOP1 receptor, which is essentially an H+ ion transduction channel. H+ ions are derived from acidic products, such as citric acid, tartaric acid, acetic acid, and hydrochloric acid. Along with other orthologue proteins such as OTOP2, OTOP3, etc., they form the Otopetrins family, but they don’t seem to form multimers or interact with other proteins, in order to facilitate sour perception.
It is apparent, nonetheless, that interactions among taste receptors (by forming homo- and heterodimers) and between taste receptors and other ligands (like peptides), are more than common in order to achieve taste perception, especially in the case of sweet and umami. Consequently, the study of protein-protein interactions in the context of taste receptors may be very beneficial in unravelling new mechanisms of taste perception.
This article was written by Harris Zaverdas, a Data Analyst at InSyBio. In February 2021, he graduated from the Department of Biology of the University of Patras, with a specialization in Genetics, Cell Biology and Developmental Biology. In his Bachelor’s studies, he gained wet lab experience in techniques such as PCR, Elisa, Cell Culturing (especially in neural and neural-stem cells) and more. Since September 2022, he is enrolled in the “Informatics for Life Sciences” MSc program with a specialization in Bioinformatics. During his MSc studies, he has gained skills in Data Analysis, NGS techniques and programming using R, C# and Python. Currently, he is also part of the Virtuous Horizon 2020 funded project (https://virtuoush2020.com), doing his secondment period in Politecnico di Torino.
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About InSyBio: InSyBio is an international pioneer biotechnology company revolutionizing the medical field, clinical trials and food/nutrition industries through targeted biomarker discovery, highly-accurate predictive analytics and the development of personalization tests for drugs, nutraceuticals and nutrition products.
Its solutions provide the R&D departments of Pharma, Research Institutes and Food/Nutrition companies, with the means both analytically and computationally to meet their challenging research and innovation goals (such as robust biomarker discovery and accurate predictive models). This is done through a sophisticated, software-as-a-service, machine learning platform which comprehensively integrates multi-omics data reducing the number of samples and additional validation experiments needed. Since 2013, InSyBio has worked with hundreds of academics, large and small companies, hospitals and research centers allowing them to succeed in their biomarker discovery tasks with an increase of at least 10% in predictive accuracy and a decrease of at least 80% in overall time and cost.
Visit www.insybio.com to see how InSyBio can help you reach your R&D goals in the era of Precision Medicine and Nutrition. For more News visit our InSyBio Blog.
In April 2023, InSyBio entered the second investment stage of the Loyal VC program and will receive follow-up funding from the Toronto, Canada-based international fund with active partnerships with Founder Institute and INSEAD. This funding will be part of InSyBio’s ongoing Series A financial round of a total of 2,000,000 Euros, with Loyal VC further assisting in completing this financial round with connections to its global network of over 800 advisors and experienced entrepreneurs, accelerator leaders, advisors, angels and venture investors.
InSyBio is a member of the Loyal VC program for the past 1½ years. During this period, InSyBio i) launched and commercialized InSyBio Chronic Pain Precision Treatment Tool series, ii) improved its biodata analysis platform, InSyBio Suite, and launched InSyBio DNAseq tool and thematic platforms for Cancer, Neurodegenerative Diseases and Nutrition and iii) optimized its business development and sales processes doubling its revenues each year.
InSyBio’s CEO Labros Digonis stated: “With the help of Loyal VC we shall speed up the completion of our open financing round addressed to selected investors and accelerate commercialization of market-sought solutions:
Establishing InSyBio suite as the platform of choice for the discovery of biomarkers from single and multi-omics data for both Pharma and Nutrition Companies.
Expanding business in the nutrition sector, partnering with nutrition companies to co-develop with them InSyBio Personalization tests and personalize their own product lines.
Developing and putting into the market our molecular tests for personalizing therapies of osteoarthritis and brain tumors.
Loyal VC Managing Partner, Michael Kosic, stated: “Competition within our portfolio for follow-on funding is fierce and the team at InSyBio rose to the top and gained a traction stage investment from us as we started to see the results of their go-to-market strategy bear fruit. We expect the trajectory to continue and are excited by the future prospects for InSyBio.
About InSyBio: InSyBio is an international pioneer biotechnology company revolutionizing the medical field, clinical trials and food/nutrition industries through targeted biomarker discovery, highly-accurate predictive analytics and the development of personalization tests for drugs, nutraceuticals and nutrition products.
Its solutions provide the R&D departments of Pharma, Research Institutes and Food/Nutrition companies, with the means both analytically and computationally to meet their challenging research and innovation goals (such as robust biomarker discovery and accurate predictive models). This is done through a sophisticated, software-as-a-service, machine learning platform which comprehensively integrates multi-omics data reducing the number of samples and additional validation experiments needed. Since 2013, InSyBio has worked with hundreds of academics, large and small companies, hospitals and research centers allowing them to succeed in their biomarker discovery tasks with an increase of at least 10% in predictive accuracy and a decrease of at least 80% in overall time and cost.
Visit www.insybio.com to see how InSyBio can help you reach your R&D goals in the era of Precision Medicine and Nutrition. For more News visit our InSyBio Blog.
About Loyal VC: Loyal VC operates a global startup index fund with over 300 investments across more than 50 countries. The fund is designed to minimize systemic bias inherent in the investment process, unlocking greater returns. The Loyal Startup Index Fund has delivered strong returns since its launch in 2018, thanks to its collaborative, staged investment process, its network of over 800 advisors, and its global relationships with the Founder Institute, the world’s largest pre-seed accelerator, and INSEAD, rated the #1 non-US business school for unicorn founders by Pitchbook. Loyal’s global start-up index fund is inclusive of a diverse, often mission-driven, group of entrepreneurs. To date over 30% of the portfolio have a woman CEO, almost 30% are from emerging markets, and around 80% address one or more of the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs).
InSyBio, through its participation in the Virtuous Project together with a prestigious team of researchers and industry players, has recently contributed to the implementation of the Virtuous Umami tool, a tool which can accurately predict the umami taste. This machine learning-based tool was tested against five databases related to foods or natural compounds and demonstrated an unprecedented accuracy, while also identifying a set of features which are representative of the Umami taste.
The umami taste is the one of the five basic taste modalities that has been associated with a pleasant taste in food. The implementation of fast and cost-effective tools to predict the umami taste of a molecule presents an interesting challenge: how to facilitate the effective rationalisation of the production and consumption of specific foods and ingredients. More details about computational taste prediction and the molecular understanding of human taste can be found in our latest survey articles: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924224421004519 and https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00217-022-04044-5
The vision of the Virtuous project, as previously stated by Dr. Marco Agostino Deriu, is to “build an intelligent machine able to decrypt a sensation by modelling the biophysical architecture of our body, covering all required competences for this ambitious challenge, starting from molecular and multiscale modelling techniques, to artificial intelligence algorithms; experimental facilities to analyze natural product typical of the Mediterranean diet such as wine and oil“
Labros Digonis, CEO of InSyBio, commented saying: “The implementation of Umami Taste is a significant milestone for InSyBio. It is a materialization of our precision nutrition vision and a great case study of how the use of our technology provides a deep insight into and facilitates the design of new food products.. Within the context of the Virtuous project, we will continue working to generate a cost-efficient and accurate computational infrastructure and set of tools to facilitate a more targeted food product design and the understanding of human taste“.
About Virtuous: The EU-funded VIRTUOUS project (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) – https://virtuoush2020.com/) is dedicated to the development of a virtual tongue made by an integrated computational framework that can screen food for natural components by binding taste receptors. This international consortium includes eight academic and industry participants from four European countries. Using a variety of computational and experimental data, partners plan to create an algorithm for the prediction of the organoleptic profile of the food based on its chemical composition. The potential application of this platform as a taste predictor is in the food industry, modern precision agriculture, and as a link to neuroscience for taste determination.
About InSyBio: InSyBio is an international pioneer bioinformatics revolutionizing the medical field, clinical trials and food/nutrition industries through targeted biomarker discovery and highly-accurate predictive analytics.
Its solutions provide the R&D departments of Pharma, Research Institutes and Food/Nutrition companies, with the means both analytically and computationally, to meet their challenging research and innovation goals (such as robust biomarker discovery and accurate predictive models). This is done through a sophisticated, software-as-a-service, machine learning platform which comprehensively integrates multi-omics data reducing the number of samples and additional validation experiments needed. Since 2013, InSyBio has worked with hundreds of academics, large and small companies, hospitals and research centers allowing them to succeed in their biomarker discovery tasks with an increase of at least 10% in predictive accuracy and decrease of at least 80% in overall time and cost.
Visit www.insybio.com to see how InSyBio can help you reach your R&D goals in the era of Precision Medicine and Nutrition.
