Illumina partners with AstraZeneca for an AI-driven project

Illumina and AstraZeneca have collaborated to coordinate their artificial intelligence development efforts in a way that joins the research and analysis work of drug discovery and genomics. If this proves to be a successful partnership in which both companies are confident then future opportunities will also be assessed to convert this partnership into a long-term successful collaboration.

Illuminas claims to be a pioneer in the genetic technology industry, working on research that was ignored in the past, innovating the sequence models and technologies to revolutionize the landscape of life science research. According to a joint press release, the research will investigate if applying Artificial intelligence to DNA and other sequencing data might enhance the number of effective biological targets and potential medication candidates.

The interim CFO and CDO of Illumina, Joydeep Goswami stated:

“This framework can prove to have a higher success and approval rate with the help of identification of the root cause genes that lead to human fatalities”.

The process will start from Illumina’s genomic data AI tools namely Splice and Primate. Splice is a unique in-depth learning technology that helps to identify unknown and noncoding mutations that were not previously identified that may be linked to patients’ rare illnesses and genetic disorders. On the other hand, Primate is an in-depth neural network tested on thousands of individuals and animals with different genetic variations to see which of these will lead to sickness.

A unique set of frameworks will be implemented by the Centre for genomics research of AstraZeneca which will incorporate the expertise of both companies. Illuminas software will be used in collaboration with the artificial intelligence algorithm of AstraZeneca, such as Jarvis, which examines the genome’s noncoding sections for potentially problematic variants. The last step in this entire process is the analysis phase, in which AstraZeneca will analyze the large-scale datasets in their ordinal biobank.

Artificial intelligence has evolved over a period of time, through continuous innovation in the frameworks that are applied to several medical research avenues such as proteomics, transcriptomics, and human genomics

R&D head Slave Petroski stated:

“The advancement in artificial intelligence will help us in answering some questions which have been unanswered for a long period of time and contribute to the goals set by the company to discover potential drug targets which a higher success rate while dividing the subgroup candidates who might benefit from our discovery.”

A company representative commented on the partnership stating that this is a partnership for both companies which can lead to a revolution for use of AI in various therapies such as cancer.