Novo Nordisk, a leading global healthcare company headquartered in Denmark, has entered into a new strategic collaboration with Microsoft Corp. to accelerate drug discovery and development using big data and artificial intelligence.
A new strategic collaboration between the two companies aims to combine Microsoft’s capabilities in data science, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence (AI) with Novo Nordisk’s drug discovery, development, and research.
As part of the partnership, Microsoft is providing artificial intelligence technology, foundational science models, and expertise along with Novo Nordisk’s data scientists and domain experts from early research and development areas.
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.
Lars Fogh Iversen, Senior vice president, Digital Science & Innovation at Novo Nordisk
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.”
Vijay Mital, Microsoft’s corporate vice president, AI Architecture & Strategy in Microsoft’s Technology & Research Division
The AI models generated through the collaboration will be applied to a range of use cases, the first two of which are being implemented at the moment.
In order to gain new scientific insights, automated summarization and analysis of information from literature, patents, scientific reports, and discussion forums is one use case.
As a second use case, the goal is to create models that predict an individual’s risk of developing atherosclerosis, which results from fats, cholesterol, and other substances building up within and on arterial walls. In addition, the AI will be used to identify novel therapeutic targets and identify biomarkers of the disease.
They are using a platform approach where they train several large models to perform multiple tasks. This will enable the companies to initiate new projects and use cases continuously throughout the multi-year collaboration.
Story Source: Reference Article
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Dr. Tamanna Anwar is a Scientist and Co-founder of the Centre of Bioinformatics Research and Technology (CBIRT). She is a passionate bioinformatics scientist and a visionary entrepreneur. Dr. Tamanna has worked as a Young Scientist at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She has also worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. She has several scientific research publications in high-impact research journals. Her latest endeavor is the development of a platform that acts as a one-stop solution for all bioinformatics related information as well as developing a bioinformatics news portal to report cutting-edge bioinformatics breakthroughs.
