Another of our Congress Conversations from our European event in October last year was with start-up Deepflare, represented by Piotr Grzegorczyk and Grzegorz Preibisch. We were glad to welcome them back to the start-up zone, which hosts organisations who are challenging the vaccine status quo with innovation and enthusiasm! If you are interested in joining us as a start-up at a future event, please get in touch with Isabella Aung (isabella.aung@terrapinn.com) for more information. We hope you enjoy the interview!
Introducing Deepflare
We start with Piotr, CEO and co-founder, who brings a theoretical mathematics and strategic consulting background to the team. He explains that Deepflare develops models and partners with biotech with a clear goal:
“To help to build better vaccines, faster.”
They focus on viral vaccines and cancer immunotherapies, trying to increase efficacy and “bring them to market faster”. Grzegorz brings a combination of theoretical mathematics and medicine to the team, and the pair met at the mathematics faculty! He is Head of R&D, focusing on knowledge transfer and identifying problems to tackle with AI.
A team on a mission
We asked for a bit more insight into the team’s mission; what are they hoping to achieve in the vaccine space? Grzegorz answers that the key aim is “to make vaccines which weren’t possible in the past”. This previous impossibility could be due to many challenges, but Deepflare focuses on variable pathogens or cancers, seeking a “robust” T cell response. Piotr hopes that “in the future, we won’t be scared of viruses or cancer anymore”, instead fighting both “very easily” with prophylactic or therapeutic vaccines.
Technology that works
With technology evolving rapidly, what sets Deepflare apart from the field? Piotr believes that bringing the “technological angle” is a distinction. Furthermore, every partnership brings learning opportunities.
“With every collaboration we get more and more data; we are able to much better augment our systems, so we see much better results with each one.”
Grzegorz adds his view as well!
“Short answer is: it works!”
However, the long answer is that data are “important” and the team has “curated” data that are “way better” than publicly available alternatives. Additionally, they go “beyond” the data. Grzegorz makes an interesting comparison to ChatGPT, with which some of our community may be familiar. He suggests that “for ages” the data used by ChatGPT have been available.
“What has changed was the use of it.”
For Deepflare, the task is to “integrate the biological knowledge” and “deep understanding of the process inside” to ensure that the algorithms “understand” the data.
Deepflare for the future
After exploring the technology that Deepflare deploys we asked what the future holds. Piotr explains that the team is currently “focused on two different paths”: viral vaccines and cancer. He reflects that at the start of their journey, they interviewed over 100 representatives from the community, discovering that, where tools are being used, they are very outdated!
“It can be improved so vastly.”
Piotr considers the “AI hype”, suggesting that the “real change” that it will bring about will be in the healthcare space. Both Piotr and Grzegorz look forward to myriad vaccine possibilities!
Why WVC?
Finally, as always, we asked about Deepflare’s reasons for joining us at the event. Grzegorz states that “really meaningful connections” are key, particularly for partnerships.
“Building partnerships is how we can build innovation.”
Furthermore, there are opportunities to learn from “a lot of really, really interesting, smart experts”, with discussions that are “extremely insightful and inspiring”. Piotr agrees that they are looking for partnerships and to participate in the discussions that are taking place. We hope the event was fruitful!
We are so grateful to Piotr and Grzegorz for their time for this interview, which we hope you enjoyed! For more interviews in this series don’t forget to subscribe to our weekly newsletter here!
