Eli Lilly and Company has unveiled the Lilly TuneLab, an innovative artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) platform designed to provide biotechnology firms with access to drug discovery models derived from extensive research data. This initiative is backed by over $1 billion in investment, making it one of the most valuable datasets in the industry for training AI systems available to biotech companies.

"Lilly has spent decades building comprehensive datasets for drug discovery. Today, we're sharing the intelligence gained from that investment to help lift the tide of biotechnology research," said Daniel Skovronsky, M.D., Ph.D., chief scientific officer, and president, Lilly Research Laboratories and Lilly Immunology. "Lilly TuneLab was created to be an equalizer so that smaller companies can access some of the same AI capabilities used every day by Lilly scientists. By opening up access, we hope to accelerate the creation of new medicines for patients who need them."

The TuneLab platform utilizes Lilly's extensive drug disposition, safety, and preclinical datasets, which include experimental data from hundreds of thousands of unique molecules. In exchange for access, biotech partners will contribute training data, which will enhance the learning process for all involved and ultimately benefit patients. The platform is hosted by a third-party provider and implements a federated learning approach, ensuring that proprietary data from both Lilly and its partners remains secure. The development of Lilly TuneLab involved collaboration with leading global technology providers and AI/ML specialists, and the company plans to expand its capabilities, including the introduction of in vivo small molecule predictive models, exclusively on Lilly TuneLab.

Lilly TuneLab is an extension of Lilly Catalyze360's offerings for biotech partners, which also includes strategic funding through Lilly Ventures, advanced laboratory facilities at Lilly Gateway Labs, and access to drug development expertise via Lilly ExploR&D.

"For many early-stage biotech companies, the promise of AI and machine learning in drug discovery remains just that — a promise," noted Nisha Nanda, Ph.D., group vice president and head, Lilly Catalyze360. "While the industry buzzes about the power of AI/ML to accelerate innovation, most small biotechs face a fundamental hurdle: they simply don't have access to the large-scale, high-quality data needed to impact decisions and train truly effective models. With Lilly TuneLab we're not just sharing resources, we are also compressing decades of learning into instantly accessible intelligence. Through this platform, we can help our biotech partners unlock novel scientific insights, make smart development decisions earlier, and increase their likelihood of success."
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