Illumina and AstraZeneca are combining PrimateAI and SpliceAI with AstraZeneca's AI tools to improve drug target discovery.

The collaboration aims to raise the yield and confidence of drug target discovery from human omics. A framework combining Illumina's PrimateAI and SpliceAI with AstraZeneca's rare-variant analysis and AI tools (including JARVIS) will analyse large multi-omics datasets in AstraZeneca's digital biobank. The release gives no results; it says the work will first evaluate whether the combination helps.

Illumina is the leading DNA sequencing company, also offering cloud genomic analysis software and AI variant-interpretation models such as PrimateAI and SpliceAI.

This sits in the Design & Stress-Test stage of the AI use-case lifecycle: Named examples from the tools pharma teams use to scope, prototype and benchmark an AI use case before committing to build it — data-catalog, sandbox and evaluation platforms.