BioTechX USA. No.1 in our Hearts
A handful of the DrugBank team attended the first BioTechX USA. We checked in with our team to see what they learned, loved, and are leaving with.
Earlier this month, a cohort of our team packed our bags and headed to California for the inaugural BioTechX USA. As a distributed team, conferences are always a great opportunity for us to spend in-person time together, share our knowledge, and soak up team bonding time.
BioTechX also gave us the opportunity to broaden the depth of our understanding of biotechnology, precision medicine, how folks are using data in their biomedical research, and so much more.
Up until now, BioTechX has exclusively taken place in Europe, so we were feeling especially fortunate to be able to kick off the annual North American series. “It was thrilling to have the hall doors open and have this rush of folks walking toward our booth,” Kim Winter, our senior account executive in sales, remarked at the end of day one. “Whether people were familiar with us or we were new to them, it was so rewarding to engage in so many conversations around quality data, our curation process, and be able to brag about how extensive our knowledgebase is.”
Throughout the two days, we were able to attend a number of great presentations. Chris Klinger, our Scientific Support Lead, noted, “Probably the single biggest trend I saw was knowledge graphs (KGs) making a comeback. Not that I think they ever went away, but at another recent conference, the focus had shifted toward large language models (LLMs) and generative AI. This time around, LLMs were still top of mind, but many of the talks focused on how to combine KGs and LLMs to really get the most out of each of these tools.”
In addition to hosting demos at our booth and mixing and mingling on the conference floor, Chris stepped onto the presentation stage himself. On day two, he walked attendees through a deep dive analysis of our data and the trends, themes, and changes we’ve seen in our data over the past 20 years. Highlights include an examination of clinical trial termination reasons and an exploration of novel target groups.
Check out the presentation yourself, and let us know if you have any questions.
Overall, BioTechX was a huge success and we’d like to thank the organizers for coordinating such a fruitful event that got us thinking and talking about all things biotech! It is always an inspiring experience to get to hear what so many ambitious and talented folks and companies are up to.
Until next time,
The DrugBank Team!