Microsoft partners with Nordic data science firm on AI project
Deal set to enable faster use of artificial intelligence (AI) in drug discovery | Planned AI models to identify novel targets and establish biomarkers of disease.
Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk will collaborate with Microsoft to accelerate drug discovery and development.
In an announcement shared yesterday, 12 September, Novo Nordisk said that the partnership would combine Microsoft’s computational services, cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) with Novo Nordisk’s drug discovery, development and data science capabilities.
Lars Fogh Iversen, senior vice president, digital science and innovation at Novo Nordisk, said: “We are very excited about this new partnership that allows us to work closely together with key experts from Microsoft as we look to expand our digital science and AI capabilities.
"Together, we are on a path to enable faster and scaled use of AI in drug discovery, ultimately leading to more breakthrough innovations and efficiency gain to better serve the needs of patients.”
Microsoft will work alongside Novo Nordisk’s data scientists and domain experts from early research and development areas to accelerate Novo Nordisk’s research and development in a multi-year collaboration.
As part of the collaboration, the companies will use AI trained for multiple tasks. This, according to Novo Nordisk, will allow new projects and use cases to be initiated on a continuous basis throughout the collaboration.
Vijay Mital, corporate vice president, AI architecture and strategy in Microsoft’s technology and research division, said: “The collaboration with Novo Nordisk is a great opportunity for us to collectively advance the state of the art of AI itself and apply it in a way that amplifies the creativity of human experts.
“To achieve this ambition, AI needs to learn from every type of information that subject matter experts find valuable and that requires the type of close interaction between multiple disciplines we see in this partnership.”
Any AI models arising from the collaboration will be applied to a range of use cases. The first two use cases are already in execution.
The first use case focuses on automated summarisation and analysis of information from sources including literature, patents, scientific reports and discussion forums to gain novel scientific insights.
The second use case aims to develop models that predict a person’s risk of developing atherosclerosis (a cardiovascular disease caused by build-up of fats, cholesterol, and other substances in and on the artery walls). The AI will also be used to identify novel targets and establish biomarkers of the disease.
Novo Nordisk isn’t the first drug company to partner with Microsoft. Back in 2019, Novartis united with the tech company to launch an AI innovation lab.
And, in June this year, UCB expanded its collaboration with Microsoft, with the aim of discovering and developing medicines faster for people living with severe diseases in immunology and neurology.
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