German pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim and technology giant IBM are partnering to harness the power of genAI and fundamental models to further advance biological drug discovery.
The partnership leverages IBM’s foundational model technology, which consists of pre-trained large-scale neural network architectures, to accelerate the identification of novel antibodies critical to the development of therapeutics.
These antibodies are created with properties such as high specificity and affinity to fight a variety of diseases, including cancer, autoimmune diseases, infections, and other medical conditions.
The effort is supported by IBM’s advanced AI models, which streamline the complex process of discovering therapeutic antibodies by determining molecular profile data for disease-specific targets and generating human antibody sequences through in silico technology. It is intended to.
IBM’s foundational models rely on a variety of publicly available datasets, and pre-trained models are tuned to proprietary data from IBM partners to create custom-designed proteins with desired properties. and small molecules.
Boehringer Ingelheim plans to manufacture and experimentally evaluate purified antibody candidates at mini-scale, thereby validating the in silico method. Feedback loops are designed to improve the efficiency and accuracy of antibody discovery technology.
“We are very excited to be working with the research team at IBM who shares our vision of making in silico biological drug discovery a reality,” said Andrew Nixon, global head of biopharmaceutical drug discovery at Boehringer Ingelheim, in a statement. “I am doing so,” he said. “We believe that by collaborating with IBM scientists, we will develop an unprecedented platform to accelerate antibody discovery and enable Boehringer to develop and deliver new treatments to patients with high unmet need. doing.”
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Earlier this year, IBM announced an AI model called MoLFormer-XL. It is intended for creating new molecules from scratch or for screening molecules for new applications.
Multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company Pfizer and Tempus, an AI-powered data company, announced a multi-year strategic partnership to use AI and machine learning to inform drug discovery and development in oncology.
Fellow pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca recently created another scheme. A health tech company called Evinova will enhance its clinical trials by extending its already established digital technology.
The new company will leverage established digital technology solutions to streamline operations. Reduce drug development time and costs by designing and conducting clinical trials. The venture also plans to move into digital remote patient monitoring and treatment.
to start Launched with $5.5 million in funding, Scala Biodesign uses AI-based computational solutions with natural protein modeling and data analysis to generate superior antibodies, enzymes, and vaccine immunogens.