Pharmaceutical giants Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Merck and Teva Pharmaceuticals, along with tech giant Amazon Web Services and the Israel Biotech Fund, officially opened a new innovation lab in Israel this week that will foster the creation of new startups developing state-of-the-art AI-based calculations. technologies to help find personalized drugs and treatments for patients.

The facility, dubbed AION Labs, will be led by CEO Mati Gill, a former senior executive at Teva Pharmaceuticals, and CTO, Dr Yair Benita, the former head of computational biology at Compugen, and scientific operations at CytoReason, and Senior Scientist at MSD. (Merck).

AION Labs is ready to help create and invest in early stage startups focused on AI and computational biology in drug discovery and development. The lab will also offer resources and mentorship as these startups develop new technologies for the pharmaceutical industry.

The facility will include a ‘wet’ lab, where biomedical research is carried out, and cloud-based compute lab infrastructure to help start-up entrepreneurs and startups with their work, from ideation to validation. of the concept. A wet lab is a carefully designed, constructed and controlled space to prevent the spillage of potentially wet hazards and contamination

Startups “will harness the power of artificial intelligence, along with the scale and security of the cloud, to find new treatments faster and more efficiently, avoid animal experiments, and advance healthcare towards precision medicine.” patient-centered, ”according to Wednesday’s announcement.

Gill told The Times of Israel in a phone interview that “being able to harness computational capabilities, algorithms, cloud-based technologies, AI, machine learning, etc., can really catalyze the way whose we discover new drugs and improve, optimize and increase the personalized efficiency with which we actually develop drugs.

“We are looking to tap into the Israeli and global ecosystem, but it is no coincidence that our partners have chosen to seize the opportunity to establish it in Israel, where we have incredible basic science research capabilities. life, as well as AI capabilities. Gill said.

“AION Labs is a prime example of what Pfizer seeks to help build through collaboration within biopharmacy and across industries: a program with the potential to accelerate the development of meaningful breakthroughs that could change the lives of patients.” ”Said Uwe Schoenbeck, Ph.D., senior vice president and scientific director of emerging science and innovation at Pfizer, in a statement. “We look forward to playing a pivotal role in AION’s further innovation.

Joern-Peter Halle, Global Research Manager at Merck Healthcare, said the new lab builds “on our long-standing and successful investments in innovation from Israel. We are excited to work with partners to create tangible value by applying AI to drug discovery and development in the biopharmaceutical industry and to make virtual drug discovery a reality. “

A good model

Gill said that AION Labs is inspired by BioMed X, an independent biomedical research institute based in Heidelberg, Germany, and with which AION Labs also announced a strategic agreement. According to the agreement, BioMed X will serve as an R&D engine to “propel AION Labs’ business creation model.”

BioMed X brings together “early research, universities and startups, and has been working for about a decade to successfully develop new projects based on the biggest R&D challenges facing the industry. And we will bring this model to Israel and adapt it, ”said Gill.

Christian Tidona, founder and CEO of BioMed X, said the institute was “delighted to extend our model of successful innovation to Israel. In our opinion, Israel is currently the best place to jointly harness the power of artificial intelligence for drug discovery and development with the world’s leading players in pharmaceuticals, technology and venture capital.

The consortium of companies forming AION Labs won a government tender for this purpose by the Israel Innovation Authority (IIA) last December.

The IIA had identified life sciences as a vital area for growth and investment potential and launched an innovation lab program in 2017. The program aims to incentivize international companies to establish these labs to support startups in their field of interest and to participate in the Israeli ecosystem by exposing themselves to a variety of innovative developments. For start-up entrepreneurs, labs provide an opportunity to access technological infrastructure, market information and industry expertise.

The initiative came at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the benefits that big pharmaceutical companies can reap from new technologies. The rapid development of vaccines against the COVID-19 virus owes its success in large part to the artificial intelligence capabilities deployed by Pfizer and Moderna, which were the first to market their COVID-19 vaccines.

“We’ve seen what AI and new technologies can do to revolutionize the industry when you have record times for drug development and record times for vaccine development using new technologies like mRNA, which Moderna and Pfizer / BioNtech vaccines are based on, and which are fully trusted and cloud-based, ”said Gill. “And our partners have chosen to work together to do so both to learn from each other and to leverage our strength in numbers.”

Gill added that AION Labs “will work with each of the companies alone and collaboratively to choose 4-6 R&D challenges that we will focus on each year – from” how do we find new drugs based on AI technologies and how do we develop technologies that will impact the way we develop drugs, not just their discovery. “

The lab “will then launch a global call for applications focused on Israelis, with a strong emphasis on attracting Israelis currently abroad, who left Israel after their doctorate or post-doctorate, offering them a chance to come back to Israel and do groundbreaking scientific research in the best environment we can offer startups to thrive, where they will receive full funding for four years, backed by the Israeli government and our partners and with mentorship and practical advice, ”Gill has explained.

Each of the formed startups will receive 1 million NIS ($ 310,000) in seed funding for the first two years, and 1 million NIS for the next two years, and will be able to raise funds from investors and partners. strategic, said Gill.

Shoshanna Solomon contributed to this report