Novo Nordisk and OpenAI team up for drug development

The agreement aims to help the company deliver faster more effective therapeutic options for patients, according to the group in a statement.

Novo Nordisk aims to leverage advanced AI capabilities to analyze large volumes of data, identify potential new medicines and reduce the time between research and treatments reaching the patient. Interestingly, just this Tuesday, Amazon announced something similar.

The company, which also sells the Ozempic — indicated for diabetes, but widely used for weight loss —, faces strong competition, especially from the American pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly.

“The integration of AI into our daily lives allows us to analyze data on a scale that was previously impossible, identify patterns that we were unable to see and test hypotheses more quickly”, said the CEO of Novo Nordisk, Mike Doustdar.

OpenAI is Novo Nordisk’s new partner – Image: Thrive Studios ID / Shutterstock

Pilot programs in different areas

• According to the company, pilot programs will be created in the areas of research and development, production and commercial operations. The statement does not detail the values ​​involved in the agreement;
• The pharmaceutical industry has been betting on AI to speed up the creation of medicines and vaccines. Currently, the development of a new medicine can take more than ten years and, on average, only one in ten candidates reach the market;
• Analysts estimate that the average cost to develop and launch a new medicine is around US$2 billion (R$9.9 billion). Given this, large pharmaceutical companies have expanded partnerships with startups specialized in AI applied to health.

The alliance between Novo Nordisk and OpenAI represents yet another move by the pharmaceutical sector towards the integration of emerging technologies to address time and cost challenges in developing new treatments.