Unlearn Appoints AstraZeneca’s Chief Medical Officer Ann E. Taylor, M.D. to Board of Directors

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--#AI--Unlearn®, developer of the first machine-learning platform that creates Digital Twins used to enable smaller, faster clinical trials, today announced the appointment of Ann E. Taylor, M.D. to the company’s Board of Directors. Dr. Taylor currently serves as Chief Medical Officer at AstraZeneca and is a leading expert in clinical development.

“We are honored to welcome Dr. Taylor to the Unlearn team. Her deep expertise in clinical development and leadership in the pharmaceutical industry will be invaluable as we work towards expanding our clinical trial collaborations globally,” said Charles Fisher, Ph.D., founder and CEO of Unlearn. “Unlearn is in an exciting phase of growth and with the support of forward-thinking executives like Dr. Taylor, we are poised to expand the use of our Digital Twins and help accelerate clinical trials and the delivery of new medicines to patients.”

Dr. Taylor brings more than 35 years of experience in exploratory research and early clinical development to the Unlearn team. In her current role as Chief Medical Officer at AstraZeneca, she is accountable for regulatory systems and strategy, and patient safety and R&D quality assurance across the company’s entire portfolio. Previously, she was Vice President, Global Clinical Development at Medimmune, the biologics R&D division of AstraZeneca, where she led the Clinical Development Organization and was responsible for overseeing all preclinical to phase 2b programs and associated clinicians, clinical scientists, operations, biometrics, medical communications, and quality assurance organizations. Dr. Taylor has also held senior roles at Novartis and Pfizer in translational medicine. She has authored and co-authored 48 peer-reviewed papers, 27 book chapters and reviews, and served on the editorial board of the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism. Dr. Taylor is a Board-certified endocrinologist and received her M.D. from Harvard Medical School.

“There has never been a more urgent need for rapid clinical development. The pipeline of potentially ground-breaking therapeutics must be met with equally innovative, efficient approaches to clinical trials,” said Dr. Taylor. “Charles and the entire Unlearn team have successfully proven that a Digital Twins approach can solve many of the challenges associated with reduced enrollment and timeline delays. Analyses using Digital Twins increase certainty, which translate to higher powered trials and more informed clinical decision-making. I am looking forward to working with the Unlearn team to expand the impact of AI-based technologies in clinical trials and overcome the many challenges in recruiting and failure rates that slow down trials.”

Unlearn is using novel AI approaches to create disease progression models for clinical research. By leveraging disease-specific machine-learning models, Unlearn generates Digital Twins, defined as predicted placebo outcomes that are matched to actual patients in clinical trials. Incorporating Digital Twins into studies using proprietary statistical methods increases confidence, accelerates trial timelines, and enables patient level insights. Unlearn’s technology has been presented in a peer-reviewed publication in Nature, and the company is partnering with the world’s leading pharma companies. Unlearn continues to have discussions with regulators, including the FDA. The company is backed by 8VC, Alumni Ventures Group, DCVC, DCVC Bio, Eisai, Epic Ventures, and Mubadala Capital Ventures. Unlearn was named a 2020 CB Insights Digital Health 150 company and was the winner of the Innovation Showcase at the 2020 CNS Summit.

About Unlearn

Unlearn is the only company using AI to create Digital Twins for clinical research, enabling drug developers in clinical development to accelerate timelines, increase confidence, and enhance clinical decision making. PROCOVA™ (Prognostic Covariate Adjustment), a proprietary statistical approach, enables Digital Twins to be incorporated into trials to increase power and reduce the size of clinical trials. Unlearn is working with biopharmaceutical companies as well as regulators to ensure its methods meet the highest scientific and regulatory standards. For more information, please visit www.unlearn.ai or follow @UnlearnAI on Twitter and @unlearn-ai on LinkedIn.

Colin Sanford
colin@bioscribe.com
203.918.4347