More biotechs are jump­ing on the AI band­wag­on, and you can count UCB as one of them.

The Bel­gian com­pa­ny inked a “mul­ti-year” deal with Mi­crosoft on Tues­day, gain­ing ac­cess to its com­pu­ta­tion­al ser­vices, cloud and AI tech. The col­lab­o­ra­tion builds on work UCB did with Mi­crosoft through the COVID Moon­shot project, a crowd­sourced ini­tia­tive to ac­cel­er­ate the de­vel­op­ment of an­tivi­ral can­di­dates.

“It’s one of the ex­pe­ri­ences that built up to this part­ner­ship,” CIO Her­man De Prins said in an in­ter­view with End­points News. 

There are three pil­lars to UCB’s ap­proach to AI and ad­vanced an­a­lyt­ics tech, ac­cord­ing to Roger Pal­fra­man, head of ex­ter­nal in­no­va­tion and US dis­cov­ery sci­ence. Bet­ter un­der­stand the pa­tient and their dis­ease pathol­o­gy, use that to iden­ti­fy bet­ter mol­e­c­u­lar tar­gets that are dri­ving the dis­ease — which will bring about small mol­e­cules, bi­o­log­ic an­ti­bod­ies and gene ther­a­pies — and then de­vel­op those mol­e­cules faster.

“It’s about help­ing our peo­ple pri­or­i­tize their de­ci­sions and make bet­ter de­ci­sions,” Pal­fra­man said. “It can save time, and… it’s max­i­miz­ing the prob­a­bil­i­ty that our dis­cov­ery in­vest­ment will trans­late in­to a ther­a­peu­tic that can ben­e­fit pa­tients.”

AI can al­so be used to de­sign bet­ter clin­i­cal tri­al pro­to­cols and op­ti­mize clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment, he ex­plained. For ex­am­ple, pub­lic da­ta can be scoured to un­der­stand which hos­pi­tals are best suit­ed for a tri­al.

UCB is the fi­nan­cial terms and ex­act length of the deal un­der wraps for now.

News of the Mi­crosoft deal comes as more and more biotechs turn to AI for a smarter and faster way to get things done.  Ear­li­er this month, Dyno Ther­a­peu­tics sketched out more than 100,000 virus­es in a study meant to de­ter­mine how many vi­able vari­ants of the AAV2 cap­sid it could de­sign with the aid of ma­chine learn­ing. And just last month, Ab­Sci bought out De­n­ovi­um and its AI en­gine with the goal of even­tu­al­ly be­ing able to dis­cov­er a drug and cell line at the click of a but­ton.

“What we want to do is bring this much clos­er to the sci­en­tists who are mak­ing de­ci­sions, and re­al­ly ac­cel­er­ate that dis­cov­ery and de­vel­op­ment process and have those fast it­er­a­tion cy­cles,” Pal­fra­man said. — Nicole De­Feud­is 

Sanofi part­ners with Ger­man AAV vec­tor biotech

Sanofi has a new gene ther­a­py part­ner.

The French phar­ma is team­ing up with Ger­man out­fit Siri­on Biotech to de­vel­op im­proved tis­sue-se­lec­tive AAV vec­tors for gene ther­a­pies. Fi­nan­cial terms of the deal were not dis­closed, but Siri­on said the col­lab­o­ra­tion will fo­cus on dis­or­ders af­fect­ing ma­jor or­gans.

“This part­ner­ship adds to our ex­pand­ing tool­box of tech­nolo­gies in the im­por­tant, emerg­ing area of gene ther­a­peu­tics,” Sanofi ge­nom­ic med­i­cine chief Chris­t­ian Mueller said in a state­ment.

Siri­on was found­ed back in 2005 with the goal of cre­at­ing new vi­ral vec­tor tech­nolo­gies for gene and cell ther­a­pies, as well as vac­cines. Their pro­pri­etary tech­nol­o­gy plat­forms are based on lenti-, ade­no-, and ade­no-as­so­ci­at­ed virus­es. — Max Gel­man

No­vo Hold­ings snaps up CRO spe­cial­iz­ing in ear­ly drug de­vel­op­ment

No­vo Hold­ings has scooped up an ear­ly drug de­vel­op­ment ser­vice provider in North Amer­i­ca, with the goal of court­ing small and medi­um-sized bio­phar­ma clients.

Head­quar­tered in Laval, Cana­da, Al­ta­sciences op­er­ates six fa­cil­i­ties that run the gamut on ear­ly drug de­vel­op­ment: pre­clin­i­cal safe­ty test­ing, clin­i­cal phar­ma­col­o­gy, bio­an­a­lyt­i­cal, CRO ser­vices, and even CD­MO ca­pac­i­ty. The cur­rent head­count is 1,300, No­vo added.

Drug de­vel­op­ment ser­vices rep­re­sent a “fast-grow­ing mar­ket,” said Ab­hi­jeet Lele, se­nior part­ner, head of prin­ci­pal in­vest­ments in the US at No­vo Hold­ings.

Al­ta­sciences CEO Chris Perkin — who will con­tin­ue lead­ing the busi­ness unit, just like he has un­der the for­mer own­ers at Au­dax Pri­vate Eq­ui­ty — said be­com­ing a part of No­vo will fos­ter their am­bi­tious growth plans, “giv­en their ex­cep­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion, track record, and broad port­fo­lio of high-growth health­care com­pa­nies.” — Am­ber Tong

Once a promising $725 million play in immunology, Gilead’s big bet on filgotinib effectively disintegrated in December when the drugmaker reworked its partnership with Galapagos. Now, Galapagos is sporting safety data that will come as a relief — but will it make a difference on filgotinib’s chances in the US?

In a study designed to compare filgotinib’s effect on sperm count with placebo, Galapagos’ JAK inhibitor saw fewer patients post a 50% or more reduction in sperm concentration after 13 weeks of treatment, according to data from the MANTA and MANTA-RAy studies unveiled Thursday.

CRLs. 483s. CBER, CDER and RWE. For biopharma professionals, these acronyms command attention because of the fundamental role FDA plays in drug development. Now Endpoints is doubling down on regulatory coverage, and launching a weekly report focusing on developments out of White Oak, with analysis and insight into what it all means.

Coverage will be led by our new senior editor, Zachary Brennan. He joins Endpoints from POLITICO, where he covered pharma. Prior to that he was the managing editor for Regulatory Focus, a news publication from the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society.