GATC Health’s Chief Business Officer Featured on Empowered Patient Podcast, Highlighting AI-Driven Transformation of Drug Development and Clinical Trial Financing

Irvine, CA — March 18, 2023 — GATC Health, a technology company dedicated to de-risking and accelerating drug discovery and development, announced today that Tyrone Lam, Chief Business Officer, was featured on the Empowered Patient Podcast, hosted by Karen Jagoda. The episode explores how GATC Health’s AI platform is reshaping the pharmaceutical industry — from clinical trial prediction to the financing of drug development.

Addressing a Broken System
The pharmaceutical drug development process faces a stark reality: roughly 90% of drug candidates that enter the development pipeline never reach patients, and the cost of bringing a single drug to market can exceed $2 billion over 10 to 12 years. Even drugs that do reach patients often work for only 20–30% of those prescribed them and frequently carry significant side effects requiring additional medications. In the podcast, Lam described GATC Health’s mission to confront these challenges head-on. “Our mission is to take as much of the financial and scientific risk out of the drug discovery business as possible,” said Lam, “which would enable better, safer, and more available drugs for humans.”

The Operon Platform and Derisq
Central to GATC Health’s approach is its Operon™platform — a comprehensive AI system comprising hundreds of models that simulate human physiology. Operon enables GATC Health to discover and validate disease targets in silico, generate novel drug compounds, and run AI-generated clinical trials to predict how those compounds will perform in humans.

From Operon, GATC developed Derisq™, an independent, objective analysis product that generates detailed reports — typically 30 to 40 pages — predicting how a given drug candidate is likely to perform in a clinical trial. Reports are delivered within four to six weeks of engagement.

In a blind challenge conducted by the University of California, Irvine School of Pharmacy Sciences — using disease areas excluded from GATC’s prior training data — the Operon platform demonstrated approximately 91% specificity and 88% sensitivity, representing roughly 11 times better performance than standard clinical trial outcomes.

“It’s not binary, but it’s very accurate compared to what’s out there today,” Lam noted.

Transforming Drug Development Financing
One of the most significant developments discussed in the podcast is GATC Health’s partnership with Lloyd’s of London, through underwriting syndicate MCI. Following extensive due diligence, GATC Health’s Operon platform was selected as the exclusive AI platform to provide analysis supporting a first-of-its-kind insurance-backed financing model for clinical trials.

Under this model, biotech companies whose drug candidates receive favorable Derisq analysis may qualify for loans backed by a Lloyd’s of London insurance policy. If the insured clinical trial fails to reach its endpoints, Lloyd’s of London reimburses the lender — dramatically reducing financial risk for drug developers and opening new pathways to capital that have traditionally been difficult to secure. “This has the ability to completely transform the way drug discovery and drug development are financed,” said Lam.

A FICO® Score for Biotech
Lam drew a compelling analogy to illustrate how Derisq could become a standard tool across the investment community: “Think of it as the FICO score for the biotech community.” Just as lenders use credit scores to assess financial risk, Lam anticipates that buy-side investors and venture capitalists will increasingly require a Derisq report as part of their due diligence process before investing in drug candidates — introducing a new level of objectivity and reducing reliance on reputation-based investment decisions.

Broader Impact: Rare Diseases, Animal Testing, and More
The podcast also explored several additional dimensions of GATC Health’s work:

• Rare and underserved diseases: By reducing the economic risk of drug development, GATC Health’s platform could make it viable to develop drugs for small patient populations that have historically been overlooked or priced out of treatment.
• Drug repurposing: Operon can identify new therapeutic applications for existing drug candidates and evaluate potential drug combinations, rapidly expanding a biotech company’s pipeline possibilities.
• Reducing animal testing: Because Operon is modeled on human data — not animal data — the platform supports a future where animal testing in drug discovery is significantly reduced or eliminated. GATC Health is a partner of the Humane Society for this reason.

About GATC Health
GATC Health is a tech-bio company revolutionizing drug discovery and development by simulating complex human biology to predict how drugs will perform in the body, achieving 91% specificity and 86% sensitivity. Trusted by the world’s largest insurance marketplace, biopharma, researchers, and investment partners, GATC Health’s AI platform, Operon™ creates intellectual property, extends pipelines, and optimizes assets. Operon also produces the company’s risk prediction product, the Derisq™ AI Report, which accurately assesses and predicts drug candidate safety, efficacy, and non-obvious side effects prior to the commitment of development capital. By uniting advanced AI, multiomics, and predictive modeling, GATC Health accelerates breakthroughs and reduces costly late-stage failures to bring safer, more effective therapies to patients worldwide. For more information, visit gatchealth.com.