ML Laboratories Plc

Pfizer's Cambridge, Massachusetts site/courtesy of Pfizer Artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) are key to enabling drug discovery and development, and Pfizer is leading the biopharma industry into the next wave of innovation. The company is rapidly scaling up and recruiting talent for a collaborative effort intended to get transformative medicines to patients faster. The mandate is “uncompromising and extremely high-quality science,” Sandeep Menon, chief scientific officer, AI digital sciences, SVP and head of early clinical development told BioSpace. Sandeep Menon The vision is three-fold: uncover disease biology with AI; use these insights to design the right molecules; determine the right patient population for clinical trial success. “We’re building the next generation of tools to use across the preclinical and clinical development spectrum,” said Jared Christensen, vice president and head of early clinical development, clinical AI/ML and quantitative sciences. Pfizer is building an “ML Research Hub” charged with creating novel predictive models and tools in what it called “a key investment.” This team, headed by Enoch Huang, vice president, machine learning and computational sciences, will partner with experts across the company to ensure successful application of AI/ML by designing, deploying and maintaining state-of-the-art tools and techniques. It will uncover insights related to disease pathophysiology and generate relevant, testable hypotheses. The ML Research efforts will be led by Djork-Arné Clevert, who recently joined the company. “AI/ML has been sewn into the fabric of drug discovery at Pfizer,” Huang said. “A sign of success is when our project teams or design chemists looking at compounds are using machine learning without knowing they’re using machine learning. That's what's happening behind the scenes.” “However, we need to apply AI/ML beyond drug design, starting with the patient in mind,” Huang continued. “We see enormous potential to mine public and proprietary datasets using ML methods to better understand disease pathophysiology, which could potentially lead to breakthrough efficacy for patients that meaningfully change their lives.” Numerous Therapeutic Applications Enoch Huang The innovation stemming from the collaboration will be therapeutically agnostic, Christensen shared. “We're going to start in areas where we already have a foothold,” he said. Pfizer’s core therapeutic focus areas are internal medicine, inflammation and immunology, oncology, vaccines and rare disease. The lift will be lighter in oncology, where there have already been considerable advances in precision medicine. Pfizer plans to build on these gains to better understand patient populations and stratifications, Christensen noted. "We are seeking out indications that are data-rich to train the models. The opportunity before us is to inform and impact target prioritization and patient stratification with AI/ML much like we have done in chemistry,” he said. In internal medicine, Christensen highlighted heart failure, diabetes and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis where there are large populations and more data accumulating each day. The same can be said for inflammatory and immunological diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. Pfizer intends to harness this data, together with relevant biomarker and next-generation sequencing datasets, to better understand where its drugs can have the most impact. “I'm a firm believer that diseases we now call one thing will continue to subdivide based on biomarkers and clinical phenotypes,” Christensen said. “I believe that kind of revolution is going to continue to come to other diseases, similar to what we have seen in oncology. We’re trying to catch and ride that wave.” It might not be too long, either, before the wave crests. Subha Madhavan These and other clinical use cases will help drive methodology development within the ML Research Hub. Subha Madhavan was recently recruited as head of clinical AI/ML and data sciences within early clinical development to help define core requirements from drug programs that will tap into the innovative methods from the Hub to accelerate development. These efforts will utilize historic clinical trial data, biomarker data and real-world evidence such as from electronic medical records to precisely define patient populations to inform study design. It’s ultimately about improving the probability of technical and regulatory success of Pfizer’s clinical trials, Madhavan said. “Within clinical AI/ML, we're really driving a paradigm shift in precision medicine. Our focus is on using multimodal data to inform trial design, first-in-human studies [and] our sign of clinical activity studies.” Pfizer is applying advanced methods like classical and deep learning to molecular data sets collated from its own clinical trials and published studies “to identify the patient subpopulations that might better respond to a certain treatment,” she explained. “I'm very optimistic about our ability to tap into multimodal, high dimensional datasets and also rapidly develop algorithms to predict a variety of outcomes for patients.” She predicts that the impact of many of these new innovative tools will reach patients within the next three-to-five years. Madhavan was attracted to Pfizer by the company’s “lightspeed thinking” and “cross-functional” approach to drug development. “Pfizer is a company that, even though it's one of the ‘big pharmas’, can pivot very quickly, as demonstrated by the COVID vaccine and anti-viral programs in response to the global pandemic,” she said. “The culture has transformed into one where we can take advantage of these [cross-functional] teams and bring innovation to multiple therapy areas.” "We are taking a disciplined product development approach to define business value, key stakeholders, core functionality and usage for each AI/ML model to help align with and accelerate our portfolio,” she added. Applying Cutting-Edge AI/ML Jared Christensen Pfizer is also applying AI/ML to digital medicine in the Pfizer Innovation Research (PfIRe Lab). Here, researchers are developing algorithms for wearable devices to help scientists monitor symptoms, assess health and better understand how treatments work. Wearable devices provide researchers and physicians with “a complete and continuous picture of the patient’s experience” during the assessment period, Menon said, rather than relying on the patient’s memory at a single office visit. Cutting-edge advances abound in AI/ML, but Pfizer is particularly interested in the ones that can help it reach patients with leading-edge medicines. As Menon said, “we are not using AI as just a fancy term or shining object. It is all about tangible and executable solutions to key research questions.” Christensen highlighted explainable AI as an area that can help build science around disease. “We’re looking for new computational models that are less black box and more open to understanding what's going on underneath the hood,” he said. When it comes to understanding the molecular basis of disease pathophysiology, Huang pointed to a powerful ML architecture called Transformer, which was developed with language models in mind. Transformer is the basis for Google Translate. “It can help us to understand the biomedical literature through natural language processing, which is an area of great interest to us at Pfizer,” he said. Madhavan said knowledge graphs can help connect genes to diseases and drugs and help identify novel biomarkers associated with certain disease pathways. Knowledge graphs can also draw connections between patient phenotypes and enable researchers to develop more effective treatments for these patient groups. Bilingual Data Scientists Wanted As Pfizer builds out its AI/ML-focused teams, the company is “rapidly recruiting” data scientists. A dynamic mission requires a dynamic mindset that can sort through complex data to make the correct scientific and therapeutic connections. “There are a lot of data analysts out there that have incredible skill, but we need to marry that skill up with people that understand the science and are willing to take a scientific lens to these hypotheses,” Christensen said. And with a strategic vision that spreads across so many divisions and specialties, “a communicative and collaborative mindset,” is another key attribute. Madhavan noted Pfizer is looking for bilingual data scientists with a deep understanding of both data science and clinical science. The desired candidate will have “work experience where they have actually deployed their quantitative skills to answer key clinical and/or biological questions,” she said. In the ML Research Hub, Huang is also looking for ambidextrous scientists who not only have ML research and data engineering expertise but also understand chemistry and molecular/cellular biology. As every scientist knows, the key to any experiment is reproducibility. “If it is not happening in the real world, I think you're just going to do more damage than good,” Menon said. He emphasized the importance of responsible AI. “A lot of times, AI is used as a buzzword. It is basic statistical modeling and mathematical modeling but if that is not done by subject matter experts who are experts in the science, it’s going to be a weapon that will backfire.” Christensen laid out the opportunity for potential team members: “It’s early days, but it is a great opportunity for data scientists who want to build foundational and lasting systems to help us make data-driven decisions to innovate across the entire drug development paradigm.” Those interested in joining the Pfizer team can find more information here.

MCLEAN, Va., June 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Freddie Mac (OTCQB: FMCC) recently priced a new offering of credit risk transfer securities backed by Tax-Exempt Loans (TELs) made by state or local housing agencies and secured by affordable rental housing. This is the company’s tenth ML Certificate offering and fourth ML-Deal with the sustainability bonds moniker. The company expects to guarantee approximately $327 million in fixed- rate ML Certificates (ML-10 Certificates) that are supported by a pool of fixed-rate TELs. The ML-10 Certificates are expected to settle on or about June 24, 2021. The ML-10 Certificates are designated as “sustainability bonds” within Freddie Mac’s Sustainability Bonds Framework. The proceeds will be used to finance multifamily properties that (a) finance affordable housing to low-to-moderate-income families, (b) may have features, or are located in areas, that further economic opportunity for residents and (c) may include certain environmental impact features. Details Related Links The ML-10 Certificates are issued by FRETE 2021-ML10 Trust (ML-10 Trust). The Class A-US and A-CA Certificates are senior principal and interest certificates, which are rated as AA+(sf) by S&P Global Ratings and the Class X-US and X-CA Certificates are interest-only certificates. The Class A-US and A-CA and Class X-US and X-CA Certificates are guaranteed by Freddie Mac. The ML-10 Trust will also issue Class B-US and B-CA Certificates, which will not be guaranteed by Freddie Mac. Freddie Mac Multifamily is a leading issuer of agency-guaranteed structured multifamily securities. ML-Deals are part of the company’s business strategy to transfer a portion of the risk of losses away from taxpayers and to private investors who purchase the unguaranteed subordinate bonds. ML Certificates typically feature a wide range of investor options with stable cash flows and structured credit enhancement. This announcement is not an offer to sell any Freddie Mac securities. Offers for any given security are made only through applicable offering circulars and related supplements, which incorporate Freddie Mac’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on February 11, 2021; all other reports Freddie Mac filed with the SEC pursuant to Section 13(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (Exchange Act) since December 31, 2020, excluding any information "furnished" to the SEC on Form 8-K; and all documents that Freddie Mac files with the SEC pursuant to Sections 13(a), 13(c) or 14 of the Exchange Act, excluding any information “furnished” to the SEC on Form 8-K. Freddie Mac’s press releases sometimes contain forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, some of which are beyond the company’s control. Management’s expectations for the company’s future necessarily involve a number of assumptions, judgments and estimates, and various factors could cause actual results to differ materially from the expectations expressed in these and other forward-looking statements. These assumptions, judgments, estimates and factors are discussed in the company’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2020, and its reports on Form 10-Q and Form 8-K, which are available on the Investor Relations page of the company’s Web site at  and the SEC’s website at . The company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements it makes to reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of this press release. The multifamily investors section of the company’s Web site at will also be updated, from time to time, with any information on material developments or other events that may be important to investors, and we encourage investors to access this website on a regular basis for such updated information. The financial and other information contained in the documents that may be accessed on this page speaks only as of the date of those documents. The information could be out of date and no longer accurate. Freddie Mac undertakes no obligation, and disclaims any duty, to update any of the information in those documents. Freddie Mac makes home possible for millions of families and individuals by providing mortgage capital to lenders. Since our creation by Congress in 1970, we've made housing more accessible and affordable for homebuyers and renters in communities nationwide. We are building a better housing finance system for homebuyers, renters, lenders, and taxpayers. Learn more at FreddieMac.com, Twitter @FreddieMac and Freddie Mac's blog FreddieMac.com/blog. MEDIA CONTACT: Erin Mancini703-903-1530 Erin_Mancini@FreddieMac.comINVESTOR CONTACTS: Robert Koontz571-382-4082Luba Kim-Reynolds212-418-8879

TORONTO, April 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mount Logan Capital Inc. (NEO: MLC) (“Mount Logan,” “MLC,” “our,” “we,” or the “Company”) announces that it and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Mount Logan Management LLC (“ML Management”), have entered into a definitive agreement (the “Agreement”) for the acquisition by ML Management of certain assets from Capitala Investment Advisors, LLC (“CIA”) and whereby ML Management will become the investment adviser of Capitala Finance Corp. ("Capitala"). Capitala is a U.S. publicly traded business development company (“BDC”) traded under NASDAQ:CPTA with approximately $328 million of total assets as of December 31, 2020. Capitala primarily invests in first lien loans and, to a lesser extent, second lien loans and equity securities issued by U.S. middle market companies. Transaction Highlights Ted Goldthorpe, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of Mount Logan, noted, “Building on Mount Logan’s active fourth quarter on the strategic transaction front, MLC has progressed further in its transition into asset management with the addition of a management contract of a U.S. middle market BDC. Management of Mount Logan has significant experience in the management of BDCs and we believe this is a compelling fund type for both investors and managers. The proposed transaction is highly strategic for MLC and we will look to use it as a growth platform.” Conference Call Management of Mount Logan and Capitala will host a conference call to discuss the transaction at 8:00 a.m. EDT on Thursday, April 22, 2021. The call will be broadcast live in listen-only mode at: To participate in the conference call, please dial +1 (877) 270-2148 approximately 10 minutes prior to the call. International callers should dial +1 (412) 902-6510. Please reference conference ID #10155599. About Mount Logan Capital Inc. Mount Logan Capital Inc. is an alternative asset management company that is focused on public and private debt securities in the North American market. The Company seeks to source and actively manage loans and other debt-like securities with credit-oriented characteristics. The Company actively sources, evaluates, underwrites, monitors and primarily invests in loans, debt securities, and other credit-oriented instruments that present attractive risk-adjusted returns and present low risk of principal impairment through the credit cycle. Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements and information within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking statements can be identified by the expressions “seeks”, “expects”, “believes”, “estimates”, “will”, “target” and similar expressions. The forward-looking statements are not historical facts but reflect the current expectations of the Company regarding future results or events and are based on information currently available to them. Certain material factors and assumptions were applied in providing these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements discussed in this release include, but are not limited to, statements relating to the required board and stockholder approval of the Capitala transaction, the satisfaction or waiver of certain other conditions contemplated by the Agreement, the closing of the Capitala transition and the timing thereof, the recurring asset management fees to be derived from Capitala, the use by the Company of Capitala as a platform to grow its asset management business, synergies to be achieved following the Closing Date, satisfactory arrangements between the Company and Capitala being entered into on the Closing Date, the Company’s business strategy, model, approach and future activities, portfolio composition and size, asset management activities and related income, capital raising activities, future credit opportunities of the Company, portfolio realizations, the protection of stakeholder value and the expansion of the Company’s loan portfolio. All forward-looking statements in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements. The Company believes that the expectations reflected in forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions; however, the Company can give no assurance that the actual results or developments will be realized by certain specified dates or at all. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results or events to differ materially from current expectations, including that the Capitala transaction may not be completed on the terms contemplated or at all, if the transaction is completed Capitala may not generate recurring asset management fees or strategically benefit the Company as expected and the matters discussed under “Risks Factors” in the most recently filed annual information form and management discussion and analysis for the Company. Readers, therefore, should not place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements. Further, a forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which such statement is made. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly update any such statement or to reflect new information or the occurrence of future events or circumstances except as required by securities laws. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release. This press release is not, and under no circumstances is it to be construed as, a prospectus or an advertisement and the communication of this release is not, and under no circumstances is it to be construed as, an offer to sell or an offer to purchase any securities in the Company or in any fund or other investment vehicle. For additional information, contact: Jason RoosChief Financial OfficerJason.Roos@bcpartners.com (212) 891-5046 Mount Logan Capital Inc.365 Bay Street, Suite 800Toronto, ON M5H 2V1