Bristol Myers' Richard Hargreaves pays $70M to launch a neurodegeneration alliance with a star player in the machine learning world

Bris tol My ers Squibb is turn ing to one of the star up starts in the ma chine learn ing world to go back to the draw ing board and come up with the dis ease mod els need ed to find drugs that can work against two of the tough est tar gets in the neu ro world. Daphne Koller's well-fund ed in sitro is get ting $70 mil lion in cash and near-term mile stones to use their ma chine learn ing plat form to cre ate in duced pluripo tent stem cell-de rived dis ease mod els for ALS and fron totem po ral de men tia. Then they'll use those in sights to start build ing new drugs for those two ail ments; a com plex, ground-up ap proach that has al ready won a close al liance with Gilead. Suc cess would trig ger up to $2 bil lion in mile stones, run ning a gamut of re search and com mer cial goals. "We be lieve that ma chine learn ing and da ta gen er at ed by nov el ex per i men tal plat forms of fer the op por tu ni ty to re think how we dis cov er and de sign nov el med i cines," said Richard Har g reaves, the chief of the neu ro group at Bris tol My ers, who made the leap from Cel gene.