Partnering for Greater Impact with Microsoft in R&D

At UCB, our aim is to amplify the power of scientific innovation through digital transformation, ensuring we deliver the best individual experience so patients can live their best lives. As part of that effort, we are integrating artificial intelligence (AI) across the research and development organization to bring accelerated solutions to patients with unmet needs. 

In drug discovery, specifically, we’re using AI methodologies to enhance UCB’s data science strategy. We want to increase the impact of a treatment through a deeper understanding of the biological causes of the disease and systematically provide better research data-driven insights to enable the faster discovery of therapeutic molecules. 

To aid us in this research, we announced an expanded multi-year, strategic collaboration to combine Microsoft’s computational services, cloud, and AI with UCB’s drug discovery and development capabilities. As several drug discovery activities require the analysis of high-dimensional data sets or multi-modal unstructured information, Microsoft’s platform can support UCB’s scientists, including its data scientists, to discover new medicines in a more efficient and innovative way.

Our first use case is related to our Targeted Protein Degradation platform, where we are using AI-enabled workflows to better and more quickly collect information around disease-relevant biology and potential molecules of therapeutic value. Supported by Microsoft’s data science capabilities, our researchers aspire to ask questions on a whole new scale, and to review and compare millions of scientific literature in a more efficient manner.

By using advanced analytics, researchers can analyze and synthesize decades of scientific knowledge faster, with better interconnectivity to uncover underlying trends. Based on such extensive knowledge, scientists can make more informed data-driven decisions in the search of new medicines. 

In addition to the scientific journey we have started here, this collaboration is also a cultural journey, exposing our industry to the novel solutions and enabling technologies provided by our partners in the technology sector, and inviting our partners to tackle more scientific challenges we face.

Watch the video now.

We are deepening our impact for people living with severe diseases by finding the right medicine for the right patient at the right time and working to further the good of society with a comprehensive collaboration strategy to support innovation. We are forging new relationships with leading researchers from academia and organizations, like Microsoft, to address some of today’s biggest healthcare challenges.