Biopharma companies turning to artificial intelligence for drug discovery

The importance of artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) has not been lost on drug development companies. Recently, to help accelerate the discovery of therapies to treat COVID-19, several deals have been established to help deploy those tools. For example, Abcellera Biologics Inc., of Vancouver, British Columbia, and Eli Lilly and Co., of Indianapolis, agreed to co-develop antibody products for treating and preventing COVID-19. The collaboration will build on Abcellera's pandemic response platform, developed under the DARPA Pandemic Prevention Platform (P3) program, and Lilly's global capabilities for rapid development, manufacturing and distribution of therapeutic antibodies. Within one week of receiving a blood sample from one of the first U.S. patients who recovered from COVID-19, Abcellera screened more than 5 million immune cells looking for those that produced functional antibodies that helped the patient neutralize the virus and recover from the disease and identified more than 500 unique fully human antibody sequences.