Microsoft teams up with 1910 Genetics to use AI and HPC for new pharmaceutical research

Most people believe the current AI trend in technology and business will be a big help for everyone. That includes its use in health and medical research. Today, Microsoft announced a new five-year partnership with the pharmaceutical research company 1910 Genetics to help boost R&D in that field with the company's AI resources.

1910 Genetics is based in Boston and launched in 2018 with seed funding from Microsoft, along with money from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and other venture capital groups. The company's main theme is that it takes a lot of money and a long time, sometimes over a decade, to develop new drugs. They also have to go through the testing and approval process. Even then the company says that drugs that enter Level 1 testing have less than a 10 percent chance of being approved by the US Federal Drug Administration.

The company says its technology and AI features combine computational data, a robotic automatic laboratory, and multimodal AI models to design molecules in far less time than traditional methods.

Microsoft added 1910 Genetics to its Azure Quantum Elements high-performance computing service as a pilot program in 2023. Today's announced partnership expands on that pilot program. This will combine 1910 Genetics' methods with Microsoft's HPC services to help build a new system that both companies hope will speed up R&D on new drugs. There's no word on the financials involved with this new partnership.

Microsoft previously announced that its Azure Quantum Elements services were used in a project designed to make a new and better lithium battery. It gave its HPC resources to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to quickly find a new material to make the battery in the space of just a few days. It looks like something similar will be used by 1910 Genetics to help discover new drug candidates in far less time as well.

Source