First it was Moderna, then Sanofi, and now Lilly. OpenAI’s influence on the pharmaceutical industry has made its way to Indianapolis.
Diogo RauLilly Chief Information Officer Diogo Rau said Tuesday that generative artificial intelligence tech will “accelerate the discovery of novel antimicrobials and the development of custom, purpose-built technologies in the battle against drug-resistant pathogens.” Spokespeople for OpenAI and Lilly each declined to provide further details.
OpenAI hasn’t publicly announced a biopharma-focused AI offering, in comparison to many of the tailored generative protein design models that have emerged, and Lilly didn’t elaborate on how it would use OpenAI’s technology.
The collaboration is intended to support Lilly’s previously-stated $100 million contribution to the AMR Action Fund, a project meant to spur more investments in antibiotic development. The fund aims to produce two to four new antibiotics by 2030.
A month ago, Sanofi announced it was partnering with OpenAI and Formation Bio to build an “AI-powered software” that would accelerate drug development, harnessing data from the three companies. Sanofi has been one of the large pharmas at the forefront of incorporating artificial intelligence into its operations, signing collaborations with the likes of Owkin and Atomwise.
Moderna unveiled its wide-ranging OpenAI pact in late April, building off previous work incorporating ChatGPT into an internal messaging platform. That chatbot, mChat, led to the deployment of ChatGPT Enterprise, which has been used in data analytics, image generation and dose finding.
Editor’s note: This story was updated to include a response from OpenAI.