Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly (LLY) has launched an artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) platform called Lilly Tunelab that gives biotech companies access to drug discovery models that have been trained on years of Lilly’s research.
The company said the first set of AI models includes proprietary data obtained through over $1 billion in investment research, which it calls “one of the industry's most valuable datasets used to train an AI system available to biotechnology companies.”
Lilly notes that TuneLabs contains experimental data that was obtained through its full drug disposition,safety, and preclinical datasets, representing hundreds of thousands of unique molecules.
Biotech companies will contribute training data in exchange for access to the platform.
This training data is meant to help with the continuous improvement of TuneLab in order to benefit the ecosystem of users as well as patients.
The AI models are designed to predict the behavior of a biotech firm’s potential drug candidate, which could be a valuable resource during the development stage – but it’s unclear if any firms will object to sharing their data in exchange for access to the platform.
Lilly said the TuneLab is designed to allow biotech firms to utilize the company’s AI models without exposing their proprietary data or Lilly’s. The company said it was built through partnerships with leading experts in AI/ML technology.
Lilly’s stock closed up nearly 12% on Tuesday’s news of the launch.
Dr. Daniel Skovronsky, chief scientific officer and president of Lilly Research Laboratories and Lilly Immunology said TuneLab “was created to be an equalizer so that smaller companies can access some of the same AI capabilities used every day by Lilly scientists.”
The platform was built through the decades spent building comprehensive datasets to utilize for drug discovery.
“By opening up access, we hope to accelerate the creation of new medicines for patients who need them,” Skovronsky said.
Lilly TuneLab is one of four pillars comprising Lilly Catalyze360, which is the company’s program launched in 2024 aimed at accelerating emerging and promising science by supporting biotech innovation across the entire ecosystem.
The other pillars include Lilly Ventures, its investment wing; Lilly Gateway Labs, an innovation hub for emerging biotech companies; and Lilly ExploR&D, which offers research and development support to biotech companies.
Dr. Nisha Nanda, group vice president and head of Lilly Catalyze360, said that while “the industry buzzes about the power of AI/ML to accelerate innovation, most small biotechs face a fundamental hurdle: they simply don't have access to the large-scale, high-quality data needed to impact decisions and train truly effective models.”
Lilly TuneLab is meant to give these smaller biotechs that access, which can increase their chances of success, Nanda added.
Lilly plans to expand TuneLab’s features beyond this first set of AI models and will add in vivo small molecule predictive models.
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