NEW YORK – Sanofi said on Thursday that it has partnered with Owkin to support its oncology portfolio through artificial intelligence-based biomarker discovery.
Specifically, Sanofi has made a $180 million equity investment in Paris-based Owkin, including a total payment of $90 million for three years plus research milestone-based payments. The two firms will pursue collaborative work building disease models from large, deidentified data sets including patient data derived from multiple academic institutions and hospitals. Sanofi will tap into Owkin's global research network, which allows data scientists to use decentralized multiparty data sets to train artificial intelligence models.
The partners will focus specifically on non-small cell lung cancer, triple negative breast cancer, mesothelioma, and multiple myeloma. They also aim to identify new biomarkers and therapeutic targets as well as build prognostic models, predict treatment responses, and optimize clinical trial design. Ultimately, Sanofi hopes to discover and develop new treatments across these four cancer types.
"This landmark partnership with Sanofi will see federated learning used to create research collaborations at a truly unprecedented scale," Thomas Clozel, Owkin's CEO and cofounder, said in a statement. "The future of AI to transform how we develop treatments is incredibly bright, and we are proud to partner with Sanofi on this mission."