No disease impacts -- new AI tech solves disease responses and medicine innovation

On Tuesday, June 13, 2023, a very important press release hit the wire - a major pharmaceutical company announced its plans to go all-in on AI. Considering how grand and impactful the news was, I expected a massive wave of top-tier media coverage but after a week, only a few specialized pharmaceutical media outlets picked up the news. So here it is - Sanofi, one of the world’s leading global pharmaceutical companies, issued a press release explaining its AI strategy and announcing the launch of its company-wide AI system called “plai” with a very bold press release titled “Sanofi “all in” on artificial intelligence and data science to speed breakthroughs for patients.” The title is very unusual for the pharmaceutical industry, which usually opts for more conservative titles for press releases that require months of legal reviews, so this really stood out as a big deal. Another reason why this announcement is such a big deal is the lengthy and detailed quote from the company’s young superstar CEO, Paul Hudson, with no other executives or partners quoted. “Our ambition is to become the first pharma company powered by artificial intelligence at scale, giving our people tools and technologies that focus on insights and allow them to make better everyday decisions. The use of artificial intelligence and data science already support our teams’ efforts in areas such as accelerating drug discovery, enhanced clinical trial design, and improving manufacturing and supply of medicines and vaccines. We have just scratched the surface as to how we embrace these disruptive technologies to achieve our ambition of transforming the practice of medicine”, Paul Hudson, CEO of Sanofi. In January 2023, during the industry’s largest annual event, the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco, I was invited to a lunch Sanofi hosted for its AI partners. During this lunch, Paul Hudson, his trusted R&D general, Dr. Frank Nestle, and other Sanofi executives, sat at different tables and discussed their plans to go big on AI. What impressed everyone most was how hands-on Paul Hudson was with AI. Literally, hands-on, as he was already actively using the plai app and explaining the integration of generative AI across the organization. He also explained that the plai app is designed and developed in collaboration with a Munich start up - AILY LABS. I hope to cover the AILY LABS story in the future articles as its fearless female co-founders, Bianca Anghelina, CEO and Sara Bisbe López, Chief of AI have very interesting backgrounds. The lunch included all the companies mentioned in the press release, including Dr. Tomas Clozel, a dear friend for many years, the CEO of Owkin, a global but proudly French AI company specializing in clinical trial analysis that Sanofi did the biggest partnership and investment deal with in 2021. This deal included a $180 million investment into Owkin which instantly gave the company a unicorn valuation per Owkin’s announcement. Among other guests were Dr. Abraham Heifets, CEO of Atomwise, the AI company using deep learning for molecular screening and drug discovery, and your humble servant, Alex Zhavoronkov, the founder of Insilico Medicine, a generative AI company specializing in end-to-end drug discovery. Both Atomwise and Insilico partnered with Sanofi in 2022. The partnership with Insilico, in addition to the drug discovery deal, included complete access to Insilico’s generative AI suite, which we have used internally to nominate thirteen preclinical candidates and advance three therapeutic programs into human clinical trials. This means that Sanofi now has the entire end-to-end generative AI platform, which in addition to Owkin’s capabilities, can rapidly solve diseases and potentially set new records in drug discovery. Sanofi also partnered and extended its collaboration with Exscientia, which made nice progress with its internal pipeline.