London, 11 April 2017 – BenevolentAI, a British artificial intelligence company, today announced that it has partnered with MRC Technology (MRCT), a medical research charity, to explore drug discovery initiatives in the field of small molecules and antibodies.

The two-year agreement sees BenevolentAI combine the power of its unique technology in the application of AI for drug discovery with MRCT’s expertise in translating novel exciting biology into lead stage therapeutic assets.

Both organisations will respectively share confidential molecular disease targets and collaborate to develop them into potential new drugs.  This will be done in one of two ways:

  1. BenevolentAI will share disease targets produced by its technology with MRCT who will then undertake the complex chemistry to create a lead compound. BenevolentAI will then undertake further preclinical and clinical development of the compound.
  2. MRCT will run molecules or antibodies that it believes may hit a target through BenevolentAI’s technology platform to validate. If validation is confirmed, MRCT will either continue to partner with BenevolentAI or work with another partner to develop the target further.

Jackie Hunter, CEO of BenevolentBio, a subsidiary of BenevolentAI commented: “The combination of our technology and R&D experience, together with MRCT’s screening and hit to lead capabilities, is powerful.  It’s a novel model and I believe that our two organisations’ complimentary skills and capabilities will enable the search for, and development of, new medicines to proceed much more quickly.”

Dr Justin Bryans, Director, Drug Discovery, MRC Technology commented: “As a charity we are always eager to pursue opportunities that can lead to new treatments for patients. Exploring promising targets via BenevolentAI’s data mining and insight is an exciting new area for us and we hope to really advance medical science through our collaboration.”

Notes to editors

MRC Technology

MRC Technology(www.mrctechnology.org)

MRC Technology is an independent life science medical research charity committed to improving the opportunities for positive patient outcomes everywhere. As a champion for human health, MRC Technology partners with academic, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, and charity organisations to move promising medical research forward into viable and accessible patient treatments. As a charity we are self-funded, reinvesting our incomes to support translating research from the bench to patient.

Our people combine commercialisation and IP management skills with diagnostic and drug discovery expertise, specialising in small molecule and therapeutic antibodies. MRC Technology projects have led to several approved drugs changing the lives of countless patients by harnessing the potential of science.


About BenevolentAI

About BenevolentAI(www.benevolent.ai)

BenevolentAI is the global leader in the development and application of AI for scientific innovation.  It is the largest private AI company in Europe and one of the world’s top five private AI companies.  Since it was founded in 2013, BenevolentAI has been building and applying AI to the world’s new natural resource – data, to generate and probe science’s ‘hidden knowledge’.  By doing so, the Company is turning highly fragmented unstructured information into new insight and usable knowledge.  The technology is transforming the process of scientific discovery and enabling previously unimaginable scientific advances.  BenevolentAI has proven its technology by applying it to human biology and has made significant progress in accelerating drug development.