French pharmaceutical company Sanofi announced Tuesday a partnership with ChatGPT-founder OpenAI and US biotech firm Formation Bio to accelerate the use of artificial intelligence in developing drugs.

AI is playing an ever greater role in developing new medicines, as well as identifying new applications for existing drugs.

It can be used for example to find new molecules more quickly and to improve clinical tests by vetting which patients would be most likely to respond to treatments.

By combining their resources, the three companies "can reimagine drug development in the pharma industry," said Benjamine Liu, chief executive of Formation Bio.

Sanofi has in recent years cooperated on AI with biotechnology companies such as Owkin, Exscientia, Insilico Medicine, Amunix Pharmaceuticals, Atomwise and Aqemia.

In a statement, Sanofi said, "The three teams will bring together data, software and tuned models to develop custom, purpose-built solutions across the drug development lifecycle."

"Sanofi will leverage this partnership to provide access to proprietary data to develop AI models as it continues on its path to becoming the first biopharma company powered by AI at scale," it said.

OpenAI "will contribute access to cutting-edge AI capabilities, including the ability to fine-tune models, deep AI expertise and dedicated thought partnership and resources."

© 2024 AFP