(Reuters) – 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.
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 to develop cancer therapies and small molecule drugs, respectively.
(Reporting by Christy Santhosh in Bengaluru; Editing by Harikrishnan Nair and Krishna Chandra Eluri)
