Janssen inks nference AI research pact

Looking to broaden its use of artificial intelligence to help lock down its R&D work, Johnson & Johnson's biotech unit Janssen has penned a new deal with AI specialist nference. The multiyear deal, financial details of which were not disclosed, will see the Big Pharma "leverage the nference artificial intelligence (AI) platform to create a unified data science-powered connective fabric across the Janssen R&D organization." In practical terms, this will see nference uncovering and prioritizing new targets and disease subsets as well as boosting effectiveness by matching the right patients to the right drugs. Further, nference will encourage efficiencies by identifying the optimal sites and investigators for pushing on with clinical trials across hospitals. To do this, nference said it has developed a "holistic data science kernel" that will synthesize some of the Janssen R&D databases with "real-time insights gleaned by the core nference AI platform from the world's public biomedical knowledge bases."