Novo Nordisk and Anthropic announce collaboration to develop drugs and AI programs

As POLITICO Europe writes, Novo Nordisk and Anthropic announced on Wednesday a collaboration to accelerate the development of new drugs and AI-based software.

The news came just hours after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s State of the Union address, where she spoke about the benefits of AI in healthcare. As an example, she cited early detection of breast cancer using AI-assisted mammography and stressed that the technology should help doctors, not replace them.

Novo said it will use the American company Anthropic’s models and Claude Science for its research. The company added that this should help it move closer to its goal of becoming the world’s “most AI-focused” healthcare company.

Novo CEO Mike Doustdar said that joining forces with Anthropic would “strengthen” the research and development division and help in the mission to create new, transformative solutions for people with chronic diseases. According to him, AI tools can open up “entirely new scientific possibilities” and help better understand human biology and the mechanisms of drug action.

Anthropic CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei said that using advanced AI models would shorten research timelines. The statement also said that the work would be built on “robust data governance” and human oversight.

Last week, Anthropic separately said that scientists had tried to use Claude to develop biological weapons. However, this did not stop Novo.

Sources

• Source: politico.eu