M&M: Merck, Mayo Clinic team up to use AI to speed drug development in MS
New partnership brings together machine learning and clinical datasets
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- Merck and Mayo Clinic are partnering to use artificial intelligence and clinical data to accelerate drug discovery.
- The collaboration focuses on developing treatments for three conditions, one of them multiple sclerosis.
- At the partnership's center is the Mayo Clinic Platform_Orchestrate of de-identified patient data.
Merck and Mayo Clinic have launched a research collaboration to use artificial intelligence (AI) and large-scale clinical data to accelerate drug discovery and development, with an initial focus on diseases with high unmet needs, including multiple sclerosis (MS).
The partnership will combine Mayo’s extensive clinical and genomic datasets with Merck’s AI-enabled research technologies. The Merck tech includes its so-called virtual cell platforms — computer-based models designed to simulate how cells behave in healthy circumstances and in certain disease settings.
The goal, according to the new partners, is to improve how drug targets are identified — and increase the likelihood that experimental therapies will succeed.
“By working with Mayo Clinic, we aim to integrate high-quality clinical data and AI-enabled insights into discovery research to improve target identification and, ultimately, the probability of success for our programs,” Robert M. Davis, chairman and CEO of Merck, said in a company press release announcing the partnership.
For Gianrico Farrugia, MD, president and CEO of Mayo Clinic, the collaboration reflects a new model for leveraging patient data to advance medical care.
“This collaboration represents a new present and future for healthcare — one where platform-based collaboration leads to more answers, more cures and better outcomes for patients worldwide,” Farrugia said.
At the center of the partnership is the Mayo Clinic Platform_Orchestrate, which will give Merck access to de-identified data from Mayo Clinic’s U.S. sites and international partners. Among these are laboratory results, medical imaging, clinical notes, and molecular and genomic data, all of which will have been scrubbed of any identifying information.
The platform also provides advanced analytics and AI tools to help researchers analyze and scale solutions derived from these datasets.
Partners also targeting other conditions with AI-based drug development
By integrating Mayo’s clinical data resources with Merck’s virtual cell technologies, the companies aim to build more accurate models of disease. This could help researchers better predict which drug targets are most likely to succeed, potentially reducing some of the trial-and-error research that often slows drug development.
According to the partners, the collaboration will initially focus on three diseases with high unmet treatment needs. In addition to MS, those conditions are inflammatory bowel disease, which is characterized by long-term inflammation of the digestive tract, and atopic dermatitis, a chronic condition marked by itchy, inflamed skin.
By combining Mayo Clinic Platform’s de-identified data, clinical expertise and Platform technology with Merck’s world-class research and development capabilities, we are poised to speed innovative breakthroughs to patients and redefine drug development.
In these disorders, analyzing large volumes of real-world clinical data with sophisticated AI tools may help uncover new treatment strategies, the partners say.
“By combining Mayo Clinic Platform’s de-identified data, clinical expertise and Platform technology with Merck’s world-class research and development capabilities, we are poised to speed innovative breakthroughs to patients and redefine drug development,” Farrugia said.
Merck said this partnership builds on its broader investments in AI-based drug discovery, while reflecting a shared focus on using advanced technology to guide evidence-based drug development.
