Emmanuel Frenehard, Executive Vice President and Chief Digital Officer at global biopharmaceutical company Sanofi, recently unveiled the company’s groundbreaking collaboration with OpenAI and Formation Bio to harness artificial intelligence for accelerating drug development.
“It is all about ensuring we get to market faster with our drugs,” said Frenehard when asked about the primary use case for AI at Sanofi. “There’s plenty of patient needs with the AI tech-driven company with Sanofi.”
He further clarified that the focus goes beyond just the most profitable drugs, stating: “It is about unmet needs. With generative AI, you can map proteins and generate new proteins. I think the spectrum of the possibility is huge, Frank. It is not just on specific drugs. It’s a wide range of drugs.”
Frenehard highlighted how AI could potentially increase Sanofi’s profitability.
“It is not an angle that is on popularity,” he said. “It is an angle of the art of the possible is what we will do with those. We have not narrowed it to anything at this stage.”
As a pioneer in applying AI to drug discovery, Sanofi recognizes the risks involved. Frenehard addressed concerns about data quality, saying: “We would never go to a drug that has risks, but we use the human loop at every step of the way. Technology helps us get there faster, and there is a human in the loop to ensure we follow the best ethical approach to using artificial intelligence.”
When questioned about the recent dissolution of OpenAI’s AI safety council, Frenehard stressed the collaborative nature of the partnership.
“We are the first ones to use the fine-tuned models in the industry,” he began. “It is not just OpenAI on its own. It is the scientific expertise of Sanofi with the AI expertise and the data from OpenAI and Formation Bio combined.”
As the first major leading pharmaceutical company to use AI models from OpenAI and Formation Bio, Sanofi sets precedence in merging the way advancements in drug discovery, including new treatment for unmet medical needs, can be coupled with ensuring ethical and safety standards are upheld.
Featured image: Credit: Sanofi
