Highlights in AI for Drug Discovery Q3 2019

Investment in AI for drug discovery in Q3 increased 15% over last quarter and 60 new investors entered the sector in Q3. There are now 460 investors, 200 AI companies, 35 R&D centers, 30 pharma companies, 25 tech companies, and 15 chemical companies active in the AI for drug discovery space.

Q3 Overview

The US continues to lead the world in AI for drug discovery. The US is home to 55.8% of the world’s AI for drug discovery companies, 65.9% of the investors, and 37.1% of R&D centers. The US also has the highest number of technology companies applying AI in drug discovery.

The Top 30 AI for drug discovery investors are DFJ, Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Felicis Ventures, Draper Associates, Khosla Ventures, Y Combinator, GV, Ame Cloud Ventures, DHVC, OS Fund, ARCH Venture Partners, Refactor Capital, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, SOSV, Data Collective, Atlas Ventures, General Catalyst, Third Rock Ventures, ZhenFund 真格基金, Baidu Ventures, Amadeus Capital Partners, and Temasek.

The Top 30 AI for drug discovery companies are Acellera, Ardigen, Atomwise, BenevolentAI, Biovista, C4X Discovery, Cyclica, CytoReason, Deep Genomics, DeepMind, e-therapeutics, Exscientia, GNS Healthcare, iCarbonX, Insilico Medicine, Insitro, Nimbus Therapeutics, Numerate, Nuritas, PathAI, PHARNEXT, Recursion Pharmaceuticals, Saama, Schrödinger, Turbine.AI, twoXAR, WuXi NextCODE, Vyasa Analytics, and XtalPi.

The most popular focus areas for AI drug discovery startups are screening, lead molecule identification, preclinical testing, drug candidate selection, target identification, and target validation. The research showed a disproportionately higher focus on modeling small molecules compared to other drug modalities. Current AI solutions focus on small molecules primarily because there is more data available for small molecules and their activities, and also because of the relatively simpler nature of their interactions with biological targets. This may lead to renewed interest in small molecules as objects of innovation where AI allows for re-visiting earlier unreachable areas of science.

Notable Developments in Q3

• SAP launched Intelligent Enterprise for Healthcare that uses intelligent technologies, such as AI, ML, IoT, and real-time, in-memory analytics to achieve operational and clinical excellence in care delivery.
• Oracle's Autonomous Database decreases much of the human effort required in data ingestion and matching and ensuring its platforms meet global requirements for security and privacy.
• Cisco’s digital technologies including IoT help to accelerate life sciences R&D and manufacturing. Cisco also expressed interest in AI diagnosis-focused algorithms.
• Workday introduced AI Maturity Model that to help transform medicine and healthcare.
• Unisys unveiled AI Center of Excellence to help its clients build advanced data analytics capabilities. They are also using AI solutions to research field engineering services to improve potential new cures.

Collaborations in Q3 

1.Healx and The Institute of Cancer Research in London announced a collaboration to develop treatments for rare childhood cancers. Healx uses AI to discover new possible ways of treating diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma an untreatable brain cancer in children.

2. Alibaba teamed up with AstraZeneca to deliver smart healthcare services using AI and IOT in China. The partnership will enable more than a million Chinese patients to learn more about disease prevention and healthcare services by scanning the AliHealth traceability code on drug packages.

3. AstraZeneca and Tencent signed a MOU for strategic cooperation. The companies plan to build a new model for online drug safety management and also to take measures against the online sale of counterfeit drugs

4. Hewlett Packard Enterprise is collaborating with Biovista to advance Biovista's Project Prodigy Big Data AI healthcare platform applied in the personalized medicine vertical.

5. Celsius Therapeutics announced a collaboration with Janssen to identify response biomarkers for ulcerative colitis by applying their single-cell genomics and machine learning platform at unprecedented scale in a large Phase 2 clinical study.

6. Schrödinger announced a collaboration with AstraZeneca to deploy Schrödinger’s advanced computing platform to help accelerate drug discovery efforts by improving the design of compounds to identify potential new therapeutic candidates.

7. Novartis and Microsoft signed a 5 year partnership that aims to provide an AI solution to use the masses of data generated from laboratory experiments, clinical trials, and manufacturing plants managed by Novartis.

8. Novo Nordisk extended a collaboration with e-Therapeutics to deploy its AI-based drug discovery technology to find new biological targets and therapies for type 2 diabetes. This will include functional genomics studies using e-Therapeutics’ Genome-Associated Interaction Networks to discover previously unknown disease processes and pathways.

9. Saama Technologies has signed an agreement to acquire Comprehend Systems. Together the companies will deploy and evolve their complementary, best-in-class clinical analytics platforms.

10. Fluid Imaging Technologies and the University of Colorado Boulder have entered an exclusive research agreement to determine whether the University’s AI software can identify bloodborne bacteria.

11. Neuropore Therapies and BenevolentAI entered into a strategic collaboration to discover novel therapeutics through the application of AI.

12. Insilico Medicine succeeded in validating the power of AI to expedite timelines in drug discovery. The company raised $37M in funding from leading Chinese VC firms including Qiming Venture Partners, Eight Roads, F-Prime Capital, Lilly Asia Ventures, Sinovation Ventures, Baidu Ventures, Pavilion Capital, and BOLD Capital Partners.

13. Two studies led by UT Southwestern provide evidence for the impact of biology using AI to identify patterns of brain activity that make people less responsive to certain antidepressants.

14. Arctoris announced that it has successfully closed a seed funding round. The funding will be used to further build out the company’s commercial operations and service portfolio.

15. BenevolentAI announced that it has signed a framework collaboration agreement with Novartis to leverage BenevolentAI’s technology platform to interrogate clinical trial and experimental data. .

16. Schrödinger announced a collaboration with AstraZeneca to deploy Schrödinger’s advanced computing platform to help accelerate drug discovery efforts by improving the design of compounds to identify potential new therapeutic candidates.

17. BenevolentAI announced $90 million in investment from Temasek. The funding will be used to scale and further develop the Benevolent Platform for drug discovery.

18. Atomwise and Jiangsu Hansoh Pharmaceutical Group (the company behind this year’s largest biopharma IPO) have launched a $1.5B collaboration to discover potential drug candidates for up to 11 undisclosed target proteins in cancer and multiple other therapeutic areas.

19. Novartis announced Novartis AI Innovation Lab and by selected Microsoft as its strategic AI and data-science partner for this effort. The new lab aims to bolster Novartis' AI capabilities from research through commercialization and help accelerate the discovery and development of transformative medicines.

20. Sensyne Health signed a collaboration agreement with Bayer to accelerate the development of new treatments for cardiovascular disease using clinical AI

21. OptibriumTM announced the introduction of its Augmented ChemistryTM services, which provide collaborators with novel AI technologies to supplement their skills and experience, enabling them to make more effective decisions and advance their drug discovery projects.

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This article was written by Margaretta Colangelo. Margaretta is Co-founder and CEO of Jthereum an enterprise Blockchain technology company. She is associate editor at AI Time Journal and serves on the advisory board of the AI Precision Health Institute at the University of Hawaiʻi Cancer Center. She is based in San Francisco. @realmargaretta