As per trusted sources, the global healthcare AI market is anticipated to exceed $10 billion by the year 2024. The United Kingdom-based artificial intelligence company BenevolentAI has reportedly signed a long-term collaboration agreement with pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca to implement AI and machine learning in discovery and development of new treatments for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and chronic kidney disease (CKD). Both the companies will form a team to combine BenevolentAI’s biomedical knowledge graph and target identification platform with AstraZeneca’s chemistry, clinical data and genomics. Reportedly, the biomedical knowledge graph will create a network of contextualized data (proteins, compounds, diseases and genes) and the relationship between them. As per trusted sources, the global healthcare AI market is anticipated to exceed $10 billion by the year 2024. Joanna Shields, CEO, BenevolentAI, reportedly stated that drug discovery and development has a future in bridging the gap between biology, AI and data. The company is delighted to partner with AstraZeneca to develop new insights and identify new treatments for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and chronic kidney disease, she further added. Mene Pangalos, EVP and President, R&D BioPharmaceuticals, AstraZeneca, reportedly stated that there is vast amount of data available to research scientists which is growing exponentially each year. The combination of BenevolentAI’s leading AI and machine learning capabilities with AstraZeneca’s disease area expertise and large, diverse datasets will unlock the potential of the wealth of data to better understand complex disease biology and identify new targets to treat debilitating diseases, he further added. Reportedly, IPF and CKD are complex diseases in which the underlying disease biology has not been understood well. Due to this, interrogation of rich, vast data sets is required by disease complexity. Hence, this partnership has come at an opportune time, claim sources. For the record, BenevolentAI has earlier inked an exclusive license agreement with Janssen Pharmaceutica, a subsidiary of Johnson and Johnson, for a series of clinical stage drug candidates. The company has also discovered a drug which can delay the onset of motor neurone disease. Source credit: https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/01/benevolentai-starts-ai-collaboration-with-astrazeneca-to-accelerate-drug-discovery/ https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-centre/press-releases/2019/astrazeneca-starts-artificial-intelligence-collaboration-to-accelerate-drug-discovery-30042019.html