BenevolentAI, a company applying advanced AI to accelerate biopharma drug discovery, has declared that AstraZeneca has added a novel target for heart failure to its discovery portfolio through their collaboration.
The heart failure target was discovered using BenevolentAI’s AI-drug discovery platform and experimentally validated by AstraZeneca, and is the first target to be selected from the extended collaboration with AstraZeneca, highlighting continued progress in the field of target identification.
Collaboration details
BenevolentAI’s strategic collaboration with AstraZeneca began in 2019, and originally focused on discovering potential new treatments for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and chronic kidney disease (CKD).
The collaboration was expanded in January 2022 to two new disease areas, Heart Failure and Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), demonstrating how the Benevolent Platform can be applied across multiple therapeutic areas.
The collaboration structure sees scientists and technologists from the two companies work side-by-side, combining BenevolentAI’s AI-driven drug discovery platform and biomedical knowledge with AstraZeneca’s scientific and disease specific expertise, leading to novel and robust target identification.
Regina Fritsche Danielson, SVP and Head of Research and Early Development, Cardiovascular, Renal and Metabolism, at AstraZeneca said: “Our ongoing collaboration with BenevolentAI has been instrumental in uncovering new insights into complex diseases such as CKD and Heart Failure. This shared expertise, combined with the power of AI, has the potential to identify the right therapeutic targets for patients with heart failure and help deliver the next generation of innovative therapies.”