Owkin expands collaboration with Sanofi to apply AI for drug positioning in immunology

Owkin, the first end-to-end TechBio unicorn that provides best-in-class AI-driven precision drug discovery, development and diagnostics by matching new biology to new populations, has announced the expansion of their collaboration with Sanofi to include immunology. 

In their work with Sanofi on target identification, the team at Owkin used their cutting-edge AI drug target discovery engine to identify the best candidate gene targets with their associated subpopulations of interest. This enables their partners to understand an individual’s unique biology and design tailored treatments.

The next phase of the collaboration will be focused on drug positioning within Sanofi’s immunology therapeutic pipeline. To do this, Owkin will combine existing knowledge and machine learning to identify the best disease indications and match the most effective subpopulations for specific drugs using multimodal data. Through the integration of AI and data into drug development programs, Owkin’s aim is to help improve patient outcomes. 

Thomas Clozel, Chief Executive Officer at Owkin, said:

The progress of our strategic alliance with Sanofi brings us closer to achieving our mission of finding the right treatment for every patient. The new projects within Sanofi’s Immunology therapeutic pipeline are further validation of our approach of applying AI to multimodal data to discovering and developing new treatments. We’re incredibly excited to see how our collaborative efforts with Sanofi can help fulfil the promise of AI in drug discovery for Immunology.

Emanuele de Rinaldis, VP, Global Head of Precision Medicine & Computational Biology at Sanofi, said:

The AI and multimodal data analysis approaches we are collaborating on will help to understand patient heterogeneity and to enable future precision medicine strategies in immunology. Our intent is for patients to receive the most effective therapy based on their specific molecular and cellular features driving their disease.

In November 2021, Sanofi made an equity investment of $180 million and entered into a strategic alliance with Owkin to work on drug discovery and development programmes.