Sanofi has announced a new collaboration with Formation Bio and OpenAI to build artificial intelligence (AI)-powered software to advance drug development and bring new medicines to patients more efficiently.
The teams will combine data, software and tuned models to create custom, purpose-built solutions within drug development and lead the way for other developers.
As part of the agreement, Sanofi will provide access to proprietary data to develop AI models, while Formation Bio will provide extensive engineering resources, experience operating at the intersection of pharma and AI, as well as its tech-driven development platform to design, develop and deploy AI technologies across all areas of the pharma lifecycle.
Meanwhile, OpenAI will provide access to cutting-edge AI capabilities such as fine-tuning models and deep AI expertise, along with partnerships and resources.
“There is massive potential for AI to accelerate drug development… to help patients and their families by bringing new medicines to market,” said Brad Lightcap, chief operations officer, Open AI.
Paul Hudson, chief executive officer, Sanofi, commented: “Next generation, first-of-its-kind AI model customisations will be an important foundation in our efforts to shape the future of drug development for pharma and for the many patients waiting for innovative treatments.”
Benjamine Liu, co-founder and chief executive officer, Formation Bio, said: “By creating and implementing customised AI agents and models designed for our industry, companies… can begin to… transform the pace at which we bring new medicines to patients.”
The collaboration marks a further step in Sanofi’s aim of becoming a pharmaceutical company powered by AI.
The company recently announced the expansion of its collaboration with Owkin in March, leveraging AI to include drug positioning in its immunology therapeutics pipeline, with the aim of improving patient outcomes using AI and data in drug development programmes.
Additionally, Sanofi and AI-specialist Aqemia entered into a research collaboration worth $140m in December 2023 to discover small-molecule drug candidates across several therapeutic areas, which followed the strategic collaboration agreement announced in October 2023 with AI specialist BioMap to accelerate drug discovery for biotherapeutics in a deal potentially worth over $1bn.