“Can we treat chronic inflammation in ulcerative colitis by reversing immune cell activation in colonic mucosa?” That’s an example of a biological question that the AI-enabled drug discovery firm BenevolentAI (AMS:BAI) would ask when exploring a new drug target.
Incorporating a disease, sign, mechanism and tissue into a single question provides focal points for the company’s AI models to explore when generating target hypotheses, said Anne Phelan, chief scientific officer of Benevolent AI in a presentation at the Royal Society earlier this year.
BenevolentAI’s strategy involves a comprehensive understanding of the biological systems underlying various diseases, breaking down silos in clinical areas and tapping diverse multimodal data to discover novel therapeutic targets. For ulcerative colitis, the company’s AI models sift through vast amounts of scientific literature and data to spot promising targets and pathways that could potentially alleviate …