Drugmaker Eli Lilly said on Tuesday it is launching an artificial intelligence and machine learning platform that provides biotech companies access to drug discovery models trained on years of its research data.
Drug developers are increasing adoption of AI technologies for discovery and safety testing to get faster and cheaper results, in line with an FDA push to reduce animal testing in the near future.
Earlier in the year, Jefferies analysts had pegged AI-related research and development spend to reach about $30 billion to $40 billion by 2040.
Lilly’s platform, TuneLab, consists of AI models which include proprietary data obtained at a cost of over $1 billion.
“Lilly TuneLab was created to be an equalizer so that smaller companies can access some of the same AI capabilities used every day by Lilly scientists,” said chief scientific officer Daniel Skovronsky.
Privately held companies Circle Pharma and insitro said they are partnering with Lilly for TuneLab. Circle will be using Lilly’s platform to develop cancer therapies while insitro will build new AI models that will be used by TuneLab for the discovery of small molecule therapies.
TuneLab works on datasets representing experimental data obtained with hundreds of thousands of unique molecules. In return for access, selected biotech partners contribute training data that can enhance the AI platform.
