Illumina and AstraZeneca in Strategic Research Collaboration to Accelerate Drug Target Discovery

DNA sequencing company Illumina said it has entered a strategic research collaboration with biopharmaceutical AstraZeneca to accelerate drug target discovery by combining their strengths in artificial intelligence-based genome interpretation and genomic analysis techniques along with industry expertise.

Photo: Joydeep Goswami, chief strategy and corporate development officer, interim chief financial officer at Illumina

The collaboration will evaluate whether a combined framework of these technologies can increase the yield and confidence of target discovery to find promising drugs based on human omics insights.

“By identifying genes that show evidence of human disease causality, the combined framework has the potential to prioritize drug candidates with increased likelihood of approval,” said Joydeep Goswami, chief strategy and corporate development officer, interim chief financial officer at Illumina.

The collaboration leverages Illumina’s next generation of AI-based interpretation tools, PrimateAI and SpliceAI, in combination with AstraZeneca’s analysis framework for rare variant genomic discoveries—alongside the latter’s own AI tools, including JARVIS and in silico predictors like missense tolerance ratio. As part of the research collaboration a framework combining the two companies’ AI-based tools will be adopted by AstraZeneca’s Centre for Genomics Research to analyze large-scale multi-omics data sets in its digital biobank. The complementary AI tools work to more confidently pinpoint genetic variants that contribute to human diseases, a critical step in the process of developing effective and safe therapies.

“Continuous innovation in the AI tools and frameworks that are applied to the growing human genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics medical research resources will enable us to answer some of the toughest questions and contribute to our aims of uncovering novel drug targets with a higher probability of success while also characterizing patient subgroups that are most likely to benefit from the treatments we discover,” said Slavé Petrovski, head of AstraZeneca’s Centre for Genomics Research, Discovery Sciences, R&D.

The research collaboration focuses on the ability of a combined framework to deliver differential performance across a broad range of human diseases. Upon its successful outcome, the two companies will assess opportunities for a long-term partnership.

Author: Rare Daily Staff