Pharmaceutical giant Sanofi has recently expanded its growing list of artificial intelligence (AI) partnerships to strengthen drug discovery, by entering into a research and development agreement with BioMap. While previous alliances have largely focused on small molecule drugs, Sanofi is looking to leverage AI for large molecule biologics development, and it’s here that BioMap’s innovative technology could provide critical insights into proteins.
BioMap, a startup with operations in Silicon Valley, China, and Singapore, has achieved recognition through the creation of what it describes as a biological map of proteins. This map, in theory, could be instrumental in identifying new drugs. In an approach known as modular AI, complex tasks are divided into smaller modules, each module playing a part in the overarching task. The recent agreement, announced this Tuesday, involves a collaborative endeavor to develop AI modules that would aid in the discovery of new biologic drugs.
The startup’s technology offers an interesting solution to one of the challenges of traditional AI research, which relies heavily on labelled data. This type of data, which adds context or meaning to raw data through assigned labels, is more limited in life sciences. In response to this, BioMap’s technology platform, xTrimo, utilizes a large model trained on unlabelled, more ubiquitous data, to inform multiple downstream task models.
Though the therapeutic areas of interest for this collaboration have not been disclosed, it is suggested that BioMap’s technology will permit more accurate predictions from limited data in areas such as immunology, neurology, oncology, and rare diseases. Mourning on this, Sanofi’s global head of research platforms, Matt Truppo, stated that the combination of Sanofi’s proprietary data sets, digital infrastructure, AI and data science capabilities and drug development expertise with BioMap’s protein large language models and high-performance computing could optimize the discovery and development process of breakthrough biotherapeutics.
It’s worth noting that Sanofi is becoming a significant player in the AI space, having made considerable investments in recent months. Last year, it committed $270 million to a cancer-focused R&D alliance with AI startup Owkin, paid an upfront $100 million to enter a partnership with Exscientia for small molecule drug development, and has entered into agreements with startups Atomwise and Insilico Medicine, with the focus of these collaborations undisclosed.
As for BioMap, the company was established in 2020 by Robin Li, the founder and CEO of Chinese internet and technology company Baidu. In this new partnership, Sanofi will pay BioMap an upfront cost of $10 million, with further near-term payments linked to achieving development milestones. If these agreed upon progress markers are met, and commercial products are developed, BioMap could receive milestone payments totalling over $1 billion.
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