Servier partners with Owkin with the aim of discovering and developing AI-driven precision therapeutics
Servier, a global independent pharmaceutical group, and Owkin, a French American biotech focused on applying artificial intelligence (AI) to drug discovery, development, and diagnostics, today announced an innovative partnership to use AI to advance and accelerate better-targeted therapies across multiple disease areas, including oncology.
Claude Bertrand, Executive Vice President of Research and Development and Chief Scientific Officer at Servier, said:
I firmly believe that the convergence of scientific and medical breakthroughs, amplified by advanced technologies like AI, holds the key to swiftly introducing groundbreaking treatments that could usher in a new era of innovation for patient care. As an independent company, Servier can focus long-term. We look forward to partnering with Owkin to optimize our drug positioning and patient stratification to potentially bring the right treatment to the right patient.
Thomas Clozel, Co-founder and CEO of Owkin, said:
We are thrilled to partner with Servier whose primary focus is scientific development. This alliance is a further proof point of the pharmaceutical industry’s readiness to innovate and to advance precision medicine using AI. Our cutting-edge tools can help our partners deliver better R&D results and better outcomes for patients with cancer and other serious diseases.
The two companies will initially tackle two major challenges within translational medicine and digital pathology. Owkin will apply state-of-the-art machine learning to Servier’s extensive clinical data in order to deliver novel insights into the underlying biology of disease, identifying the patient populations most likely to benefit from Servier’s new therapies to improve patient outcomes. A multidisciplinary team of scientists, computational medicine experts and clinicians from Servier and Owkin will collaborate closely to drive the collaboration between Paris and Boston.
The first project aims to identify tumor types, tumor microenvironments, as well as de-identified patient subgroups that may optimally respond to a Servier asset. The two companies will then analyze tumor evolution to potentially identify drug combinations that may act on additional immune checkpoints or tumor cell-intrinsic mechanisms. The second project will explore the implementation of digital pathology and its potential to speed up screening and enable broader analysis of tissue-based biomarkers.
About Servier
Founded to serve health, Servier is a global pharmaceutical group governed by a Foundation that aspires to have a meaningful social impact, both for patients and for a sustainable world. With its unique governance model, it can fully serve its vocation with a long-term vision: being committed to therapeutic progress to serve patient needs. The 21,400 employees of the Group are committed to this shared vocation, a source of inspiration every day.
As a world leader in cardiology, Servier's ambition is to become a focused and innovative player in oncology by targeting difficult and hard-to-treat cancers. That is why the Group allocates over 50% of its R&D budget to Oncology. Servier is the leader in mutant IDH inhibition, with the first ever mutant IDH1 inhibitor approved in the U.S. and the European Union, and the company continues to drive the science behind targeted mutant IDH inhibition.
Neuroscience and immuno-inflammatory diseases are the future growth drivers. In these areas, Servier is focused on a limited number of diseases in which accurate patient profiling makes it possible to offer a targeted therapeutic response through precision medicine. To promote access to quality care for all at a lower cost, the Group also offers a range of quality generic drugs covering most pathologies, relying on strong brands in France, Eastern Europe, Brazil and Nigeria. In all these areas, the Group includes the patient voice at each stage of the life cycle of a medicine.
Headquartered in France, Servier relies on a strong geographical footprint in over 150 countries and achieved a revenue of €4.9billion in 2022.
For more information: servier.com
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Authors
About Owkin
Owkin is the first full-stack TechBio company on a mission to understand complex biology and derive new multimodal biomarkers through AI.
We identify precision therapeutics, de-risk and accelerate clinical trials and develop diagnostics using AI trained on world-class patient data through privacy-enhancing technologies. We merge wet lab experiments with advanced AI techniques to create a powerful feedback loop for accelerated discovery and innovation in oncology, cardiovascular, immunity and inflammation.
Owkin also founded MOSAIC, the world’s largest spatial multi-omics atlas for cancer research across seven cancer indications.
Owkin has raised over $300 million through investments from leading biopharma companies, including Sanofi and BMS, and venture funds like Fidelity, GV and Bpifrance, among others.
