AI pathology specialist PathAI has announced a multi-year expanded collaboration agreement with Bristol Myers Squibb. The initial work within this extended agreement will focus on key translational research in oncology, fibrosis, and immunology, with an overall goal to forward these into clinical trials. PathAI develops quantitative pathology algorithms for drug discovery and development. "We look forward to collaborating with PathAI to expand the potential application of AI in the drug development process to include translational research, clinical trials, and diagnostic advancements," said Robert Plenge, MD, PhD, senior vice president of Bristol Myers Squibb, head of Immunology, Cardiovascular, and Fibrosis Thematic Research Center, and head of Translational Medicine. "We feel that PathAI will be a productive collaborator given digital pathology represents a growing area for BMS, PathAI is a leader in the field, and the fact that we have a long-standing productive relationship with the company," he added.

In the past five years, interest in applying artificial intelligence (AI) approaches in drug research and development (R&D) has surged. Driven by the expectation of accelerated timelines, reduced costs and the potential to reveal hidden insights from vast datasets, more than 150 companies with a focus on AI have raised funding in this period, based on an analysis of the field by Back Bay Life Science Advisors (Figure 1a). And the number of financings and average amount raised soared in 2021. At the forefront of this field are companies harnessing AI approaches such as machine learning (ML) in small-molecule drug discovery, which account for the majority of financings backed by venture capital (VC) in recent years (Figure 1b), as well as some initial public offerings (IPOs) for pioneers in the area (Table 1). Such companies have also attracted large pharma companies to establish multiple high-value partnerships (Table 2), and the first AI-based small-molecule drug candidates are now in clinical trials (Nat.

Today Roche announced a new collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb that will use cutting edge digital methods to improve standardization and interpretation of tissue-based assays and will leverage Roche's established partnership with PathAI. Roche plans to integrate a novel PathAI-developed algorithm for biomarker analysis into their digital pathology workflow software. The AI-powered algorithm will be used to analyze clinical trial samples and generate biomarker data. These imaging tools will enable very precise diagnoses that will lead to personalized treatment options for patients with solid tumors. In October 2021, Roche announced a strategic partnership with PathAI.

Today Roche announced a new collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb that will use cutting edge digital methods to bring significant improvements in standardization and interpretation of tissue-based assays. This new partnership will leverage Roche's established partnership with PathAI. Through this new collaboration, Roche will integrate a novel PathAI-developed algorithm for biomarker analysis into their digital pathology workflow software. The AI-powered algorithm will be used by Bristol Myers Squibb to analyze clinical trial samples and generate biomarker data. These pathology imaging tools will enable very precise diagnoses that will lead to personalized treatment options for patients with solid tumors.

The top-funded companies on the recently-released list of top 100 most-promising AI companies to watch from CBInsights, a market intelligence company based in New York, include companies offering autonomous driving software, an AI System on a chip, endpoint security with AI, and a drug discovery company. The list, selected from a base of 6,000 companies, is based on business relations, investor profile, news sentiment analysis, R&D activity, a proprietary scoring system, market potential, competitive landscape, team strength and tech novelty, according to an account in TechRepublic. "This year's cohort spans 18 industries, and is working on everything from climate risk to accelerating drug R&D," stated CB Insights CEO Anand Sanwal. Companies on last year's list went on to raise $5.2 billion in additional financing, including 16 of over $100 million each. Some companies exited via merger or acquisition, IPOs or SPACS.

The artificial intelligence-powered drug discovery company insitro has secured a mammoth funding round of $400 million, to carry forward its development efforts and Big Pharma partnerships with the likes of Gilead and Bristol Myers Squibb. The series C financing was led by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, also known as CPP Investments, with additional backing from Andreessen Horowitz, Casdin Capital, ARCH Venture Partners, Foresite Capital, GV, Third Rock Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, HOF Capital and Alexandria Venture Investments, as well as accounts managed by BlackRock and T. Rowe Price Associates. Temasek and Softbank Investment Advisors also joined the round, in addition to an undisclosed global investment group and a U.S. payer-provider health system. "For insitro, 2020 was a year of incredible growth and progress toward our founding vision of bringing the predictive powers of machine learning to drug discovery," said founder and CEO Daphne Koller. "We built out and demonstrated the capabilities of our target discovery platform in our Gilead collaboration in NASH, receiving the first of our operational milestone payments, and put in place an outstanding collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb in ALS; we also took a big step forward towards moving from targets to medicines through the acquisition of Haystack Sciences, a high throughput chemistry platform that enables [machine learning]-driven molecular design; and we recruited Dr. Roger Perlmutter to our board to help guide our drug discovery efforts," Koller said.