Illumina on Tuesday unveiled what it calls the world\u2019s largest functional cell dictionary that, when paired with artificial intelligence, will help accelerate drug discovery.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dubbed the Billion Cell Atlas, the data set shows how cells react to specific alterations. The company calls it the \u201cmost comprehensive map of human disease biology to date.\u201d<\/p>\n
Illumina is partnering with pharmaceutical giants AstraZeneca, Merck and Eli Lilly to help train the AI model. Within hours of the announcement, other pharma and tech companies were calling, eager to tap the data set for drug discovery, said Rami Mehio, senior vice president of Illumina\u2019s BioInsight, the newly launched business that focuses on\u00a0AI, software, and data to accelerate discovery across life sciences.<\/p>\n
Pharma companies want to know their targets, explained Mehio. \u201c\u2018If you do this, what happens? If you do that, what happens?\u2019 They need to do endless experiments, most of which fail,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Traditionally, researchers study diseases by perturbing individual genes \u2014 switching the code \u201con and off\u201d using CRISPR technology \u2014 to study how the body responds. But these alterations don\u2019t work in isolation: Each change cascades across the entire genome.<\/p>\n
Understanding a disease requires understanding the whole system rather than toying with \u201cspecific switches.\u201d<\/p>\n
That\u2019s where Atlas comes in. \u201cThe future of drug discovery isn\u2019t about doing more experiments. It\u2019s about doing the right ones,\u201d said Mehio.<\/p>\n
Atlas will measure how 1 billion individual cells respond to genetic changes across more than 200 disease-relevant cell types, according to Illumina.<\/p>\n
By working with pharmaceutical giants to train AI models, Atlas aims to accelerate disease research \u2014 helping scientists to understand the impact of specific drugs, identify new treatments, and confirm promising genetic targets.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is not a single big, serious pharma company that isn\u2019t trying to build a data set like this,\u201d said Mehio.<\/p>\n
Some big technology companies have come out of the woodwork and expressed interest in Illumina\u2019s Atlas. \u201cIt\u2019s interesting,\u201d said Mehio. \u201cYou\u2019re going to see a world where traditional pharma and tech start to compete,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Illumina\u2019s biggest competitors are its clients: pharmaceutical companies. \u201cSome players who are within pharma have better domain knowledge of the needs of pharma,\u201d said Mehio.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are a lot of people entering the data space, but Illumina is uniquely positioned in our understanding of biology, our full software stack, and our cost structure to generate the data,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Illumina\u2019s most recent financial filings show third-quarter revenue of $1.08 billion, flat compared to the same period last year. Net income declined 76%, falling to $150 million in the third quarter from $642 million in the same quarter last year. The company expects to report its full fourth-quarter and fiscal year 2025 results at the close of the market on Feb. 5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Illumina on Tuesday unveiled what it calls the world\u2019s largest functional cell dictionary that, when paired with artificial…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":514423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5134],"tags":[5229,3653,64,1582,276,1370,3549,7264,7289,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-514422","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-biotech","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-california","13":"tag-latest-headlines","14":"tag-san-diego","15":"tag-sandiego","16":"tag-top-stories-sdut","17":"tag-united-states","18":"tag-united-states-of-america","19":"tag-unitedstates","20":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","21":"tag-us","22":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115890947569757590","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}