Il­lu­mi­na con­tin­ues trek in­to drug dis­cov­ery, inks AI pact with As­traZeneca

As it con­tin­ues to fight for its merg­er with Grail, an ear­ly-de­tec­tion can­cer test com­pa­ny, the se­quenc­ing be­he­moth Il­lu­mi­na is mak­ing an­oth­er push in­to drug de­vel­op­ment.

Tues­day morn­ing, Il­lu­mi­na and As­traZeneca an­nounced a part­ner­ship for AI drug dis­cov­ery. Il­lu­mi­na will pitch in two AI tools — Pri­mateAI, which pre­dicts dis­eases from mu­ta­tions us­ing pri­mate da­ta, and SpliceAI, which pre­dicts how pre-mR­NA se­quences are cut. As­traZeneca brings its own set of AI tools, in­clud­ing JARVIS, which looks at non-cod­ing genes. The ini­tial phase of the col­lab­o­ra­tion is set to go for six months, af­ter which “the two com­pa­nies will as­sess op­por­tu­ni­ties for a long-term part­ner­ship,” Il­lu­mi­na’s chief strat­e­gy of­fi­cer Joy­deep Goswa­mi told End­points News in an email.

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