Lilly and Verge Genomics partner to use AI for drug development

Eli Lilly has entered a three-year partnership with biotech company Verge Genomics to research and create new drugs for the treatment of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a motor neuron disease. Verge developed an all-in-human, artificial-intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery and development platform to develop treatments for serious genetic diseases. Based on patient brain transcriptomes across various neurodegenerative diseases, the platform offers insights into new causal disease mechanisms in genetically categorised patients to enable the discovery of therapeutic targets. The partnership will use Verge's all-in-human platform to discover and establish new targets for ALS. Lilly will choose up to four targets detected by Verge and will advance them into clinical trials and markets.