Lieber Institute Partners with AWS to Accelerate Brain Disease Drug Discovery

The Lieber Institute for Brain Development (LIBD) is transforming its approach to drug discovery by fully migrating its IT infrastructure to Amazon Web Services (AWS), leveraging advanced AI and cloud computing capabilities to accelerate research into brain diseases. The Institute, which houses the world's largest collection of donated brains for mental illness research, received the 2024 AWS IMAGINE Grant and plans to develop innovative treatments for conditions including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, and age-related brain diseases.

The partnership enables the Institute to store its extensive genomic data collection in the cloud while utilizing AWS's expansive computing power and artificial intelligence services. This cloud-based infrastructure facilitates seamless collaboration among scientists worldwide, enhancing both internal research capabilities and partnerships with external institutions.

"The Lieber Institute, now powered by AWS, will work faster and more nimbly to bring hope and new treatments to patients and their families," said Dr. Daniel Weinberger, M.D., Lieber Institute Director and CEO. "This is the future of science, and we're excited to be part of it."

Central to this collaboration is the development of GRAPE (Generative Reinforcement Alignment of Predicted Expression), a groundbreaking AI tool that combines generative and predictive artificial intelligence to design new drugs for mental illness treatment. Unlike existing schizophrenia medications that target proteins associated with only a handful of risk genes, GRAPE aims to address the root cause by mitigating the combined effects of hundreds of risk genes involved in the disease.

"AWS's AI capabilities give the Institute the speed, security, and scale the organization needs to drive research innovation that will radically change outcomes for people affected by brain health issues by uncovering new treatments that will radically change outcomes for people affected by brain health issues," said Jeff Kratz, Vice President of Nonprofit and Public Sector Industries at AWS.

The AWS IMAGINE Grant provides the Institute with up to $200,000 in unrestricted funding, up to $100,000 in AWS Promotional Credits, and implementation support from the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center. Scientists led by Dr. Shizhong Han, Ph.D., along with Staff Scientists Michael Nagle, Ph.D., and Jiyun Zhou, Ph.D., are spearheading the GRAPE development.

"Biomedical research has entered a new era, driven by the explosion of data—especially from single-cell technologies—which now provide the foundation for modern AI applications," said Dr. Han. "By harnessing these rich datasets, our researchers are using AI to gain deeper insights into genome function, pinpoint causal genes linked to brain disorders, and design novel therapeutic molecules."

The partnership has already yielded significant efficiency improvements. Cell painting analysis that previously took almost a week now completes in approximately half an hour. "With AWS, we can process a dataset in approximately half an hour," said Staff Scientist Frank Piscotta, Ph.D., who uses the technique to identify new drug targets for schizophrenia.

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