SANTA CLARA, Calif., April 19, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Vectara, the Large Language Model (LLM)-powered conversational search platform, and Oncotelic, Agoura Hills, today agreed to a strategic partnership that brings Vectara’s revolutionary Natural Language Understanding (NLU) technology to pharmaceutical research and development, accelerating Oncotelic’s programs against aging, cancer, and infectious disease.
A large language model (LLM) is an artificial intelligence (AI) system that uses deep learning algorithms to generate natural language from a large corpus of text. It is trained on a large text dataset and can generate new text similar to the original dataset. Large language models are used for a variety of tasks, such as natural language processing, text generation, and machine translation. LLMs such as ChatGPT took the world by storm forever changing how we do things.
The Challenge: One of the major challenges faced by scientists and researchers is the laborious and expensive process of sifting through massive research papers and publications to find valuable statistics or data points that could aid in the innovation and creation of new or improved immunotherapies. Publicly available artificial intelligence (AI) tools lack the required depth that subject matter experts need, despite their breadth in searching a large volume of data.
The Proposed Solution: To address this challenge, scientists must create meticulously validated corpora by combining private and public research, and then applying advanced NLU algorithms interactively with a conversational AI Research Assistant.
The Expected Benefits: The solution is expected to speed up pharmaceutical research to gain relevant and significantly robust results by accelerating the acquisition of insights, potentially leading to groundbreaking solutions for drug discovery and formulation.
Oncotelic’s use cases demonstrate the potential for Vectara’s innovative LLM-powered search in areas like life sciences and healthcare, where the demands for scientific accuracy limit the usefulness of most conversational AI tools. Vectara’s “Grounded Generation” ensures that responses to the questions posed are constrained only to the relevant and specific source data set.
“We are proud to work with a growing number of research & analysis firms that, through AI, are rediscovering their most significant competitive advantage - extracting value from their treasure-trove of research data through LLM-powered search,” said Amr Awadallah, Vectara’s CEO and Founder. “I am especially proud of our partnership with Oncotelic. It is rewarding to play a role in bringing much needed treatments to patients."
"We are excited to combine Vectara's advanced NLU technology with our internal AI discovery and development programs to revolutionize drug discovery and development. This partnership represents a significant step forward for both companies, and we are eagerly anticipating the outcomes from this venture," said Saran Saund, Oncotelic’s Chief Business Officer.
About Vectara
Vectara is an LLM-powered conversational search and knowledge discovery platform which allows businesses to have intelligent conversations over their own data (think ChatGPT but for your data). Developer-first, the platform provides a simple API and gives developers access to cutting-edge NLU (Natural Language Understanding) technology with industry-leading relevance. With Vectara’s “Grounded Generation,” businesses can quickly, safely, and affordably integrate best-in-class semantic search and question answering into their application, knowledge base, site, chatbot, or support helpdesk. Visit Vectara.com for more information.
About Oncotelic
Oncotelic is an immune-oncology company dedicated to the development of first-in-class RNA therapeutics as well as small molecule drugs against cancer and infectious diseases. OT-101, the lead immuno-oncology drug candidate of Oncotelic, is a first-in-class anti-TGF-beta RNA therapeutic that exhibited single agent activity in relapsed/refractory cancer patients in clinical trial settings. OT-101 also has shown significant activity against Covid-10. Oncotelic is seeking to leverage its deep expertise in drug development to improve treatment outcomes and survival of cancer patients, with a special emphasis on rare pediatric cancers. Oncotelic has rare pediatric designations granted by the US Food and Drug Administration for diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma through OT-101, melanoma through CA4P, and acute myeloid leukemia through OXi4503.
Media Contact
Carly Bourne
vectara@bulleitgroup.com
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