Four CCADD members attended the SNU-Hokkaido University joint symposium held in Sapporo, Japan. On the second day of the symposium, professors and students of the Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology of Seoul National University  met members of the Graduate School of Information Science and Technology of Hokkaido University and shared their research ideas, experiences, and results. The participants from the two universities introduced their research progress on a variety of topics, varying from computer-human interaction study to the development of new drug entities using machine learning technology. 

Dr. Soohyun Kim of CCADD gave an oral presentation, where she discussed if therapeutic drug monitoring (TDM) of vancomycin is cost-effective in elderly patients. According to Dr. Kim, the cost-effectiveness of vancomycin in this population might not be so cost-effective as was previously anticipated, but could be cost-effective in patients admitted to the intensive care unit. In the following poster session, Dr. Jeong-An Gim presented the results of a pharmacoepigenomic research (Difference in DNA methylation and pharmacokinetics parameters of tacrolimus between two periods of a bioequivalence test with tacrolimus). Dr. Kim tried to provide a basis for tacrolimus pharmacoepigenomics and may provide a clue to the different dose of tacrolimus through his research. Yoomin Jeon, a PhD student at CCADD, introduced a new research project, entitled "A Dimensionality Reduction Model to Increase the Efficiency and Accuracy of Clinical Trial Feasibility Assessment Using Electronic Medical Records." Yoomin’s poster was associated with a new grant CCADD received recently from the National Research Foundation (PI: Prof. Howard Lee). Another PhD student, Siun Kim, presented his research with Dr. Soohuyn Kim about the validity of the equivalence margin in the phase 3 trial with CT-P13, an Infliximab biosimilar. He had an opportunity to discuss the implication and the future plan of the study with researchers of Hokkaido University.

Those attending the symposium from CCADD were able to meet with many young Japanese professionals and researchers in various fields. They  look forward to seeing them again at a joint symposium at Seoul National University next year.

ACTRiS and P-MATCH are the acronym of the two research projects CCADD has been undertaking, each representing the AI-based Clinical Trial Resource Information System and the the Precision Machine Learning AssisTed Clinical Trial Eligibility Assessment using Hospital Records, respectively. From the very moment of its establishment, CCADD has been quite keen on branding a new concept that it produced by using a professionally-designed and aesthetically-executed logo.

The ACTRiS and P-MATCH logos are easily recognizable through the use of a bold and capitalized sans-serif typeface except for a small 'i' in ACTRiS. The iconic figure left to the text in the logos symbolizes a pill or capsule cut in half. The figure is also cut in two, a triangle (left) and the remaining dome-shape (right), each denoting A and P, which are starting letters in ACTRiS and P-MATCH, respectively. Furthermore, a square dot after PMATCH makes the two logos attain some level of consistency between them. There are three variations in color: green, dark gray and white on black.

Chloe Minkyeong Lee of StudioPEEK created the logos, who also designed the logo of CCADD. The ACTRiS logo will feature at the web-based clinical trial information system CCADD is currently working on.

Two scientists from Samsung SDS, Mr. Jaeho Yang, Principal Engineer (Sr. Expert), IoT Lab, and Dr. Sunghoon Joo, PhD, Senior Engineer, Advance Research Lab, visited CCADD on August 24, 2018 to have a joint seminar. In this joint seminar, Prof. Howard Lee gave an overview of the research projects CCADD has performed in the area of applying the artificial intelligence (AI) technology to clinical drug development, entitled with 'AI-enriched Clinical Trials'. Prof. Lee emphasized how AI could streamline various research activities pertaining to clinical trials, one of which is patient enrollment. For example, it is important to know who did what and how before planning any clinical trial, which is the main theme of the grant that the Korea Clinical Trials Global Initiative or KCGI has recently awarded CCADD, named 'AI-based Clinical Trial Resource Integration System or ACTRiS',

Following Prof. Lee's presentation, Mr. Yang introduced CCADD to the core concepts of several AI technologies and their potentials in drug discovery. Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) and autoencoding (AE) were a few examples Mr. Yang put emphasis on during his presentation. After that, Dr. Joo expanded further on several research projects Samsung SDS has conducted to design new molecules for drug discover in silico using advanced AI technologies such as molecular graphs and AE. Collectively, Mr. Yang and Dr. Joo showed how AI could fasten the discovery of new drug candidates that are likely to maintain excellent bio-physico-chemical properties, which may save time, resources, and costs in the whole drug development program. 

CCADD and Samsung SDS agreed to continue looking for a cadre of collaboration and joint research opportunities that may benefit both organizations.   

Prof. Howard Lee has attended the 40th EMBC (Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference), Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, on July 17-22. The theme of the meeting was “Learning from the Past, Looking to the Future”, inspired by the 40th anniversary of the world’s largest international biomedical engineering meeting.

In the Conference, Prof. Lee co-chaired a minisymposia with Prof. Kyung-Soo Park, Yonsei University, entitled 'Pharmacometrics Approaches & Novel Drug Delivery Systems in Pharmaceutical Engineering'. Prof. Lee also spoke about the ACTRiS project at the minisymposia, particularly with a strong emphasis on the importance of precision feasibility for clinical trials. The one-page abstract for Prof. Lee's presentation that he co-authored with one of his students, Yoomin Jeon, can be downloaded below. 

Two senior undergraduate students (Left: Hee Chang Lim, Right: Eun Gyung Kim) will be spending the next eight weeks (July-August 2018) at CCADD, participating in the summer internship program at the Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology, Seoul National University. 

Hee Chang is a 4th year undergraduate student at the College of Liberal Studies, Seoul National University. He is majoring in Economics and Electrical Engineering. Hee Chang's research interests include how big data and the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) can design safer clinical trials. He is looking forward to working as a team member of the CCADD's current research project, named AI-based on Clinical Trial Resource Integration System (ACTRiS). 

Eun Gyung is also a senior, currently enrolled in the School of Natural Science, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), majoring in Chemistry. She wants to study further on theoretical and computational methods to describe and predict bio-molecular dynamics between proteins, drugs, and other bio-systems. In addition, she has developed a broad interest in computer-aided drug modeling and design. 

Let us join welcoming the two amazing student interns, and wishing them a hot summer to achieve many and have fun! 

On July 4, 2018, Prof. Joohon Sung and two of his lab members, Dr. Sooji Lee and Jooyeon Lee, visited CCADD and shared their research projects and interests with us. Prof. Sung is the PI, Laboratory of Genome Epidemiology and Health Big Data(G-EPI), Graduate School of Public Health at Seoul National University. 

Not only did Prof. Sung provide CCADD with a great insight into the basic concepts of genome analysis research, but he also gave an overview of the seminal genome studies that offered a new understanding on human genetic architecture and its utility. Following Prof. Sung's lecture, Dr. Sooji Lee introduced CCADD to the basic concept of Mendelian Randomization (MR), and showed several examples, where MR successfully predicted the efficacy or lack thereof shown in real clinical trials. Jooyeon Lee, a Ph.D candidate, showed CCADD how to use public databases and web tools in genome-wide association studies.

This was a great opportunity for CCADD to learn about the research ideas G-EPI Lab has conceptualized and materialized. Furthermore, CCADD had a chance to build an outside network with other lab members. G-EPI and CCADD will continue looking for new collaboration opportunities in projects, research, and student education. 

Prof. Howard Lee has been recently awarded a government grant from the Korea Clinical Trials Global Initiative or KCGI to develop a clinical trial resource integration system, and a grant kick-off meeting was held on March 15, 2018. The total research funding was $560,000, which is equivalent to 500 million Korean Won. The title of Prof. Lee's proposed research plan was the AI-based Clinical Trial Resource Information System or ACTRiS, which is pronounced 'Act Ris'. All of the CCADD members have contributed a lot to planning and completing the research plan for ACTRiS, and they will also actively participate in the grant one way or another. In ACTRiS, Prof. Jang Hee Hong, Choongnam University College of Medicine and Choongnam University Hospital, will be leading a subset project to develop an integrated web-based system for review activities by the Institutional Review Board, particularly for multisite clinical trials. Additionally, Prof. Jin Wook Choi, Seoul National University Hospital, and Prof. Hyun Joong Kong, Choongnam University Hospital, have joined to lead the IT development projects. Furthermore, codings and programming works will be outsourced to Mebixon, a leading life science solution development company in Korea.    

What makes ACTRiS unique is its active employment of state-of-the-art user experience technologies, which will be led by Prof. Joongseek Lee, along with his UX lab at the Graduate School of Convergence Science and Technology, Seoul National University. Not only that, several aspects and system components of ACTRiS will be fortified by applying AI technologies. For example, the accuracy and completeness of the contents in ACTRiS will be automatically checked and corrected by AI. 

"It means a lot to CCADD that we finally secured this start-up grant for the smart clinical trials initiative in Korea, which is expected to officially start next year", Prof. Lee said. "This signifies the vision that CCADD set out was right. Smart clinical trial is the future."