BenevolentAI Announces Strategic Partnership with AstraZeneca; Two Targets Selected

BenevolentAI entered into a long-term strategic collaboration with AstraZeneca to use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning for the discovery and development of new treatments for chronic kidney disease (CKD) and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). The collaboration comes with an upfront payment, development milestone payments and tiered royalties on future revenues. AstraZeneca and BenevolentAI will work side by side in joint multidisciplinary teams, integrating working practices across data science, machine learning, respiratory and cardiovascular R&D, target ID and precision medicine to break down traditional drug discovery boundaries and enable more efficient data-driven decision making. The combined AstraZeneca/BenevolentAI teams will incorporate proprietary data, tailor approaches to using that data, jointly interpret the results and then work together to identify targets potentially leading to new medicines.

Update 01/27/2021

AstraZeneca has selected a novel chronic kidney disease (CKD) target to advance to its drug development portfolio, making it the first AI-generated target from the collaboration to enter the company’s portfolio.

Update 12/15/2021

AstraZeneca has added a novel target for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) ,discovered using BenevolentAI's platform, to its drug development portfolio. This is the second novel target from the collaboration that has been identified, validated, and selected for AstraZeneca's portfolio.

Update 01/13/2022

Benevolent expanded its collaboration with AstraZeneca by adding systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and heart failure (HF) to its ongoing work to identify multiple novel targets in chronic kidney disease (CKD) and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). The three-year expansion includes an upfront payment, research funding, development milestone payments and tiered royalties on future revenues.