Pharmaceutical Companies focus on Drug R&D AI is being focused on

Four major Pharmaceutical companies have teamed up to invest in startups that use artificial intelligence and computational biology in drug development. AION Labs is a collaboration between AstraZeneca, Merck, Pfizer, and Teva Pharmaceutical. The life science businesses’ Pharmaceutical knowledge will be paired with Amazon Web Services’ technology know-how and the Israel Biotech Fund’s investing experience. AION Labs will find and invest in firms that employ artificial intelligence and computational biology to solve drug discovery and development problems.

The scientific founders and breakthroughs will come from all across the world. They’ll be able to work in a biomedical research wet lab and a cloud-based computational lab focused on developing new algorithms and computational approaches for discovering and developing new medicines. Researchers and specialists will lead both labs from the AION Labs partner firms. The Israeli government is supporting the new entrepreneurial hub.

The Israel Innovation Authority, a government-run economic development body, has identified biosciences as a promising sector for growth and investment. The team that would become AION Labs won a government proposal to open an innovation lab in December. Finding new medicines faster and more efficiently, avoiding animal tests, and moving healthcare toward patient-centric precision medicine are among the goals of the firms founded by AION Labs.

BioMed X, a Heidelberg, Germany-based biomedical research institute that has fostered biomedical discoveries bridging academic research and the Pharmaceutical sector, will collaborate with AION Labs. Mati Gill, a former Teva executive, will lead AION Labs. We aspire to contribute to the health and well-being of humanity with a great talent pool, AI technology at our heart, and a significant commitment from the Israeli government.