AstraZeneca and  Berg have started a research collaboration.

BERG, a biopharmaceutical company based in Boston  merges biology with technology to map the nature of diseases, will contribute to identify and evaluate novel targets and therapeutics to treat neurological disorders such as Parkinson’s disease.

Niven R. Narain, BERG Co-Founder, President and Chief Executive Officer shoed his excitement int he press release statement: “For the past decade, BERG has been at the forefront of using artificial intelligence for drug discovery, and we’re excited to partner with AstraZeneca, which has been an industry leader in discovering and developing therapeutics to improve patient care in neuroscience. Parkinson’s disease is a devastating progressive disorder, and we’re proud to collaborate with AstraZeneca to find new approaches for treating Parkinson’s patients and exploring therapeutic targets for additional neurological diseases.”

Berg will receive from AstraZeneca  chemical fragments to be searched for potential drug candidates.

Samples are collected from diseased and healthy patients, and subjected to omics analysis that includes examination of the genome, proteome, lipidome and metabolome. The data is then combined with patient clinical information and analyzed by BERG’s proprietary artificial intelligence analytics platform, with the goal of advancing potential assets into the clinic.

This process can produce trillions of data points from a single sample.

The aim is to harness modern computing systems to predict how molecules will behave and how likely they are to make a useful drug, thereby saving time and money on unnecessary tests. 

AstraZeneca will have the right to secure an exclusive license to any of the drug candidates coming out of the work.

Read further: Reuters