Owkin and The Comprehensive Cancer Center of the Medical University of Vienna Announce Strategic Collaboration to Accelerate Cancer Research and Care with AI Copilot

Paris and Vienna, 22 August 2025  — Owkin, a leading agentic AI company, and the Comprehensive Cancer Center of the Medical University of Vienna (MedUni Vienna) and University Hospital Vienna, a global leader in oncology research and care, today announced a strategic collaboration to advance cancer research and patient outcomes with the deployment of Owkin K, the first universal AI copilot for biology.

This partnership centers on integrating Owkin K into the Vienna oncology ecosystem, aiming to empower clinicians and researchers with cutting-edge agentic AI tools. By leveraging real-world usage and feedback from Vienna’s experts, Owkin K’s large language model will be continuously fine-tuned to support biological reasoning, precision medicine, and the rapid development of new therapeutic strategies.

"Vienna is one of the most advanced clinical and research ecosystems in cancer. Collaborating with them brings us one step closer to a future where AI augments every medical decision", said Thomas Clozel, M.D., CEO and Co-founder of Owkin.

"Our mission is to deliver the most advanced innovations to our patients. By partnering with Owkin, we are pioneering the use of agentic AI to enhance diagnostics, clinical reasoning, and ultimately improve outcomes for cancer patients," said Prof. Shahrokh Shariat, Head of the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the Medical University of Vienna/University Hospital Vienna.

As a first focus area, the collaboration will harness Owkin K’s agentic AI capabilities in the field of urologic cancers, starting with advanced bladder cancer, which is a major clinical challenge worldwide. Through direct access to spatial omics and multimodal datasets in oncology, combined with Vienna´s proprietary patient data, researchers at Vienna will be able to explore high-resolution data from bladder cancer patients, including digital pathology, genomics, and clinical information.

By using Owkin K, Vienna’s scientists can instantly query and visualize complex multimodal patient data to discover new biological insights and establish and validate novel hypotheses. Fast and iterative queries to Owkin K can, for example, highlight specific clinical features in a subset of advanced bladder cancer patients based on their molecular signature or response to chemotherapy. Moreover, interrogation of the type and extent of immune cell infiltration into malignant tumour cell clones, or the co-expression or adjacent expression of key genes between spatially close or distant cell types, can be queried. Together, these and other insights via Owkin K will accelerate the identification of novel therapeutic targets and highlight patient stratification strategies. 

This collaboration is a key milestone in the shared vision to build the world’s leading AI platform for biology, one that continuously learns from top medical centers to transform patient care and drive the next revolution in cancer research.

Medical University of Vienna – short profile ‍

Medical University of Vienna (MedUni Vienna) is one of the longest-established medical education and research facilities in Europe. With almost 8,600 students, it is currently the largest medical training centre in the German-speaking countries. With more than 6,500 employees, 30 departments and two clinical institutes, twelve medical theory centres and numerous highly specialised laboratories, it is one of Europe's leading research establishments in the biomedical sector. MedUni Vienna also has a medical history museum, the Josephinum.

Comprehensive Cancer Center Vienna‍

The Comprehensive Cancer Center (CCC) Vienna of MedUni Vienna and University Hospital Vienna links all professional groups of these two institutions that treat cancer patients, research cancer diseases and are active in teaching and training in this field. (https://ccc.meduniwien.ac.at/)