Faster, cheap­er, bet­ter? Post-buy­out deal Cel­gene jumps in­to AI al­liance with a $25 mil­lion bet on speed­ing dis­cov­ery work

Cel­gene clear­ly isn’t wait­ing in lim­bo to see when, or if, the big Bris­tol-My­ers Squibb deal will go through. It’s still ex­e­cut­ing deals, and the R&D side of the busi­ness has just en­list­ed one of the more promi­nent AI play­ers to go to work on a trio of new drug projects in on­col­o­gy and im­munol­o­gy. They’re pay­ing $25 mil­lion up front to get the tech par­ty start­ed.

Cel­gene, a top 15 R&D group world­wide by re­search bud­get, tied up with Ex­sci­en­tia in Ox­ford, UK for the work. We aren’t get­ting any specifics about the tar­gets, but the com­pa­ny is ex­plor­ing AI to see how it lives up to the emerg­ing field’s big boast: That they can de­liv­er new drugs for hu­man test­ing faster and more ac­cu­rate­ly than the stan­dard in­dus­try ap­proach the big play­ers have been us­ing. In Cel­gene’s case, that would com­mon­ly mean go­ing out and do­ing a dis­cov­ery deal with a biotech, but the ma­jors al­so have their own in-house op­er­a­tions.

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