Boehringer Ingelheim and IBM have announced a partnership aimed at advancing generative artificial intelligence (AI) and foundation models for therapeutic antibody development.
The collaboration agreement will see Boehringer use an IBM-developed, pre-trained AI model that will be “further fine-tuned” on the German drugmaker’s specific proprietary data to help accelerate the pace at which it can create new antibody therapeutics.
The companies noted that, despite “major” technological advances, the discovery and development of therapeutic antibodies against diverse targets remains a “highly complex and time-consuming process”.
IBM’s foundation model technologies, which have already shown success in generating biologics and small molecules with relevant target affinities, are used to design antibody candidates for specific disease targets. These are then screened with AI-enhanced simulation to select and refine the best binders for the target.
Boehringer Ingelheim outlined that it will produce small quantities of the candidates that can be tested experimentally.
Andrew Nixon, global head of biotherapeutics discovery at Boehringer Ingelheim, said: “I am confident that by joining forces with IBM scientists we will develop an unprecedented platform for accelerated antibody discovery which will enable Boehringer to develop and deliver new treatments for patients with high unmet need.”
Alessandro Curioni, vice president, accelerated discovery, IBM Research, added that the company was “thrilled” to bring its multi-modal foundation model technologies to Boehringer “to help accelerate the pace at which Boehringer can create new therapeutics”.
The collaboration comes just days after Boehringer said it would be acquiring bacterial cancer therapy specialist T3 Pharmaceuticals in a deal worth over $500m, marking a significant boost to its immuno-oncology portfolio.
The transaction gives the company access to T3’s proprietary therapy platform, which uses live bacteria to deliver immune-modulating proteins directly to cancer cells and tumour micro-environments while sparing healthy tissues.
Boehringer also entered into an exclusive research collaboration and worldwide licensing agreement with Covant Therapeutics in March to develop new cancer immunotherapies, and announced a collaboration and licensing agreement with 3T Biosciences at the beginning of the year to discover and develop next-generation cancer therapies.