Prof. Lee and David Seung U Lee met with Prof. M. Madan Babu, PhD, FRS, FMedSci, from St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Memphis, TN, USA, July 17, 2023 in the Grand Hyatt Incheon. Prof. Babu is currently the Endowed Chair in Biomedical Data Science and Director of the Center of Excellence for Data Driven Discovery, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. He will soon serve as a Senior Vice President and Chief Data Scientist at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. Prof. Babu is an acclaimed researcher and scientist in various fields including GPCR signaling, regulation and pharmacology, gene , gene regulation, computational biology, structural bioinformatics, and drug discovery. He published many research articles in high-impact journals such as Nature, Science, and Cell. He is also Chief Editor for Molecular Systems Biology journal. 

It has turned out that Prof. Babu had followed the work from CCADD and is interested to know more about what is currently happening in those research areas. In this regard, the main purpose of Prof. Babu's visit this time was to establish professional relationships and set up international scientific bridges with St. Jude to enrich biomedical data science collaborations. Prof. Lee and David detailed the big data science and AI in drug development and optimal usage projects by CCADD, in which Prof. Babu showed great interest. Prof. Babu asked Prof. Lee for additional information and s for those research projects, which David will soon follow up. 

Out of a 3-hour lunch meeting with Prof. Babu, many collaboration opportunities and projects were discussed and proposed, one of which was an exchange program between the two institutions. Co-publication was also talked about, and Prof. Babu asked if CCADD could write a perspective paper regarding drug repurposing using AI for the Molecular Systems Biology journal. Prof. Lee and David hope to see more details soon and will keep CCADD informed. 

 In a gathering of brilliant minds from around the world, Professor Howard and his team attended Conference on Health, Inference, and Learning (CHIL) 2023. The three-day event, held from June 22nd to 24th in Cambridge, Massachusetts, provided a platform for cutting-edge research and discussions on the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and healthcare.

Prof. Howard, along with his students Jung Hyun and David, as well as his former student, Siun, were among the select few from South Korea to be invited to this renowned conference. Their attendance was further bolstered by the acceptance of their research paper, titled "Revisiting Machine-Learning Based Drug Repurposing: Drug Indications Are Not a Right Prediction Target," which they presented during the first day's poster session. The team explained the significance and implications of their study, actively engaging with fellow participants and answering questions. More information about the paper can be found here.

The conference encompassed an extensive array of topics, all of which were essential for researchers navigating the rapidly evolving field of AI in healthcare. Attendees were treated to enlightening talks and exciting ideas that spanned innovation, equity, and generalizability in machine learning for health. Discussions included "innovation in machine learning for health," "sharing health data in an age of generative AI: risks, limitations and solutions," "equity implications of machine learning in health: how technology could help or hurt," and "generalizability in machine learning for health: critical for robustness or a distraction from specific validation."

Every moment of the conference proved to be an eye-opening experience. It served as an extraordinary opportunity to broaden their perspectives, push boundaries, and venture beyond their comfort zones.

The Korean Society of Medical Oncology or KSMO is the largest academic congregation in the filed of oncology, consisting not only of medical or clinical oncologists, but of basic and clinical researchers involved in the development of anti-cancer drugs, diagnostics, and vaccines. Prof. Howard Lee was invited to this year's general assembly and symposium for KSMO and discussed the potential and pitfalls of antibody-drug conjugates or ADCs. The first ADC, Mylotarg, was approved in 2000 by the US FDA, followed by its voluntary withdrawal in 2010 due to safety issue, and re-approval in 2017, which just tells how difficult it has been to develop a safe and effective ADC for clinical usage in cancer patients. However, eight ADCs have been approved by the US FDA since 2019 totaling 13, and this indicates how promising the development horizon of ADCs can be. Prof. Lee talked about the pros and cons of ADCs mainly from the perspective of drug development. For example, an ADC consists of three independent components: an antibody (mostly monoclonal antibody or mAb), a cytotoxic payload or warhead, and a linker that combines both antibody and payload. Due to its structural complexity and interactions between elements, which has not been fully elucidated yet, the development of an ADC has faced many technical difficulties. At the same time, however, ADCs also can become a much better platform than other competing ones in the field of oncology because of the uniqueness of its mechanism of action. 

Prof. Howard Lee was invited to a forum organized by the Korea Ministry of Food and Drug Safety (MFDS) to celebrate its 10th anniversary of upgrade from a Ministry of Health and Welfare institution to a Prime Ministerial Office institution 10 years ago. Prof. Lee chaired the panel discussion at the forum. More detailed information about the forum can be found at this.

In a remarkable display of camaraderie, CCADD and PMATCH orchestrated a picnic at the Han River Park on the eve of Teacher's Day. As nature bestowed its benevolence upon us, we found ourselves immersed in a perfect afternoon. With the sun's gentle caress and the river's serenade, we reveled in the kindred spirits, savoring the delights of frosty drinks and delectable foods.

Yet, the allure of the evening did not end there. Our collective spirit soared as we played mini-games, guessing the identities of illustrious personalities and iconic movies. The atmosphere crackled with anticipation, each moment filled with suspense and fun, with laughter and delight. The day felt all the more special with the joining of a new member, Tuan.

Ultimately, the picnic’s highlight came as we conveyed our gratitude to Prof. Howard. We cut the cake, delivered a small gift and a flower, a humble testament to our heartfelt appreciation for his unwavering dedication, support, and guidance.

As the sun gracefully dipped, casting its golden hues upon us, we said Goodbye to the memory that shall forever be etched in our collective experience. The essence of Teacher's Day resonated within us, within the echoes of laughter, and within our thanks to Prof. Howard.

CCADD welcomes Le Dinh Tuan as a new researcher.

Tuan studied Computer Science at the University of Engineering and Technology, Vietnam National University. Afterward, he spent two years as a research assistant at the Multimedia Communication Signal Processing Lab (MCSP Lab) and received his master's from Artificial Intelligence Convergence Department, Pukyong National University. Tuan's research interests centere around statistical and machine learning (especially deep learning) methods for clinical data analysis.

As a researcher under the supervision of Professor Howard Lee, Tuan will actively partake in the current projects at CCADD pertaining to medical artificial intelligence. At the same time, he will seek to further his knowledge on applying the artificial intelligence technology to the fields of medicine and pharmaceutical sciences.

CCADD is thrilled to welcome Tuan to our team and looks forward to his contributions to our ongoing research efforts.

Prof. Howard Lee was invited to Arirang TV New Show in the morning of April 7, 2023, which is World Health Day set by WHO or the World Health Organization. Prof. Lee talked about the implication of the day, coupled with the accomplishments by WHO, particularly for the last couple of years such as the global management of infectious diseases including the COVID-19 pandemic. Full details of Prof. Lee's interview can be watched at the following YouTube link. 

On February 24^th, CCADD celebrated the graduation of two of its members, Siun Kim and David Seung U Lee. Siun, an applied bioengineering major, started his joint Masters and PhD program in 2018 and studied under Prof. Howard Lee’s guidance. He received his PhD in Medicine for his thesis on applying natural language processing technology to drug safety monitoring. David, a molecular medicine and biopharmaceutical sciences (MMBS) major, joined CCADD in 2021 and has since studied under Prof. Howard Lee. He received his MSc in Medicine for his study on clinical characteristics associated with dulaglutide treatment adherence.

Siun, for all his contribution to CCADD, embarked on a new career as a postdoctoral researcher at Seoul National University Hospital Biomedical Research Institute. There, he will focus on developing AI models for the prediction of hypoglycemia during dialysis and the analysis of nursing notes of kidney surgery recipients. David will continue to study under Prof. Howard as a PhD student starting 2023.

We congratulate on their accomplishment and convey our best wishes at their new start.

The 2023 Winter Internship at CCADD has begun. For this year’s internship, CCADD has Jaeho Hyun, who will study and experience the on-going research projects at CCADD.

Jaeho Hyun is a senior in biomedical engineering at Korea University. He studied mechanical system design engineering at Hongik University until the second year in college before he transferred to Korea University starting his junior year. His motivation for transfer was his interest in finding engineering solutions to solve problems in the medical field. Prior to this internship, he studied artificial intelligence (AI) technology in Seoul Information and communication technology (ICT) innovation square in the summer 2022. The program deepened his interest in applying technical knowledge to addressing real world problems pertaining to healthcare and medicine. During the internship at CCADD, he intends to expand his knowledge and explore various applications of real-world data analysis and AI technology in drug development sciences.

Jung-Hyun Won was invited to the KOREA AI SUMMIT 2022 (“AI for Good”), where she presented the collaboration research project between CCADD (Siun Kim, Jung-Hyun Won, David Seung U Lee, and Prof. Howard) and Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) entitled “Revisiting and Reformulating Machine Learning-based Drug Repositioning”, orally and as a poster. The Korea AI Summit 2022, organized by AI Innovation Hub, Microsoft Research, IITP, and Korea University AI Research Institute, aimed to provide a platform for academic leaders from the prominent universities and institutes to share and explore the latest developments and technological trends in AI research.

Jung-Hyun Won stated that the team (i.e., CCADD and MSRA) has pointed out problems in the current task formulation of machine learning-based drug repositioning studies. According to Jung-Hyun Won, the team has found the spurious correlation between data collection pattern of drug characteristics and approved indications of drug. They also found that train-test split based on random sampling led to the overestimation of the performances of existing DR models. Jung-Hyun Won stressed that the team is currently reformulating drug repositioning problem as predicting investigational disease and generating eligibility criteria of clinical trials for a drug-disease pair.

Technology showcase can be watched the following youtube thumbnail.

CCADD had a year-end workshop on December 21st, 2022. This year, Prof. Howard Lee and the members of CCADD were joined by PMATCH (the tech start-up led by Prof. Howard) and Dr. Hyun-Ah Lee (our respected alumnus). The workshop was also delightful because some of Prof. Howard’s part-time students and Yujin (our student intern) were there too.

The first session gave a look back on 2022. Accomplishments—academic and otherwise—were shared and celebrated. Prof. Howard cheered the members for their effort and delivered a message of hope for the coming year. The following sessions laid out some concrete plans and goals for 2023, such as attending conferences domestic and abroad and streamlining journal club and book reading programs.

In the afternoon, PMATCH took us down memory lane about all the footsteps leading up to the development of its app, Battery, and its upcoming global debut at CES^® 2023, one of the world’s biggest tech event. Yoomin Jeon, the Chief Technology Officer of PMATCH, stitched all the key moments into a single narrative, which had been so far shared with CCADD in parts.

Perhaps, one of the most anticipated sessions was Dr. Hyun-Ah Lee’s talk about her career after graduation. She traced back her memory from the time when she was studying under Prof. Howard to where she is today. She admitted her life as a PhD student trying to be on par with the rigor and the expectation of Prof. Howard was never easy but definitely worth pursuing. More importantly, she urged us to hang in there as it will all pay off one day, and her sincerity resonated with all of us.

The day’s workshop closed with a special lecture by Prof. Howard. He proposed a vision for CCADD in 2023, exhorting us to recognize the need for honing the necessary skillsets and realigning our research area. Most importantly, Prof. Howard’s closing remark that CCADD should make a bigger leap forward in 2023 taking risks and facing challenges inspired us like nothing else.