Accenture recently announced an investment in biotech firm 1910 Genetics (1910) through Accenture Ventures, strengthening its focus on AI-powered drug discovery. 1910 is a biotechnology company advancing small and large-molecule drug discovery with a multimodal AI platform powered by laboratory automation. As part of this investment, Accenture and 1910 will collaborate to combine tailored solutions and scalable infrastructure to help biopharma clients accelerate drug target identification, reduce costs, and deliver better, more affordable therapies to patients.
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Input-Transform-Output (ITO) Platform
"1910's proprietary Input-Transform-Output (ITO) platform is a scalable, end-to-end AI solution designed to deliver better drug candidates with applications across all modalities and therapeutic areas," the official release said.
The ITO platform is a multi-AI agent system comprising hundreds of models that leverage federated learning alongside three proprietary data streams: computational data, wet lab ground truth biological data, and wet lab proxy biological data.
"The platform helps enable drug discovery teams to achieve high precision target identification, optimise molecule design, and conduct advanced simulation throughout the R&D process." This approach aims to increase clinical success rates, while shortening experimental iteration cycles and reducing the overall cost of drug development, according to the official release on October 31.
"Taking an AI-driven approach is essential in order to reinvent the drug discovery and development process," said Tom Lounibos, global lead of Accenture Ventures. "Collaborating with 1910 Genetics allows us to integrate our AI expertise with their innovative technology and deliver solutions that can transform drug discovery and improve patient outcomes."
Accenture noted that its expertise in scaling AI solutions across enterprises can help biopharma companies seamlessly integrate 1910's AI platform into their existing pipelines.
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AI is Transforming Drug Discovery
Petra Jantzer, senior managing director and global lead of Life Sciences at Accenture, added, "We look forward to joining up our diverse experience in implementing generative AI projects across enterprises and deep expertise in the life sciences sector with 1910 Genetics and its holistic, comprehensive AI platform. Our investment and collaboration support our vision for our biopharma clients to implement tech-enabled drug discovery, automating processes, breaking down silos and increasing productivity."
"In our discussions with biopharma companies, the desire for AI transformation of their traditional R&D processes is evident," said Jen Nwankwo, founder and CEO of 1910 Genetics. "It's also clear that 1910's end-to-end AI platform—from in silico to the wet lab and back—addresses the challenges that biopharma companies face with point solutions. By collaborating with Accenture, we aim to bring 1910's AI platform to biopharma companies as an enterprise-wide horizontal infrastructure that breaks down barriers in data, model, and computing power to accelerate the discovery and development of both small and large molecule therapeutics across all therapeutic areas."
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Leadership Role
Accenture's senior members, Petra Jantzer and Tom Lounibos, will join 1910's Business Advisory Board, while Kailash Swarna and Cecil Lynch will join its Technology Advisory Board. 1910 Genetics will also participate in Accenture Ventures' Project Spotlight, which supports startups in enterprise technology innovation.
The terms of the investment were not disclosed. Together, Accenture and 1910 will combine their experience and expertise to help drive breakthroughs in therapeutic development, improve the efficiency of drug discovery, and drive innovation for biopharma companies, the official release said.
