Illumina teams up with Nvidia to advance multi-omics and AI in drug discovery

USA – Illumina has partnered with Nvidia to enhance multi-omics and artificial intelligence in drug discovery.

This partnership aims to combine Illumina’s DNA sequencing tools and software with Nvidia’s powerful computing and AI capabilities to create biological foundation models that enhance multi-omic data analysis.

Illumina, recognized for its expertise in DNA sequencing, plans to integrate Nvidia’s accelerated computing power into its DRAGEN analysis software.

This collaboration is designed to expedite the process of analyzing genomic data, enabling pharmaceutical companies to identify key drug targets more efficiently.

The integration of AI with genomics is expected to propel advancements in personalized medicine and drug discovery, giving the pharmaceutical industry a competitive edge.

The two companies will focus on developing new biological foundation models and enhancing Illumina’s connected analytics platform.

The integration of Illumina’s DRAGEN software with Nvidia’s computing power will help researchers analyze complex multi-omic data more quickly and accurately, unlocking transformative insights that could accelerate drug development.

In addition to improving its sequencing and analysis capabilities, Illumina intends to use Nvidia’s AI tools for analyzing multi-omics data, which combines genomic, transcriptomic, and epigenetic information.

This multi-omic approach can generate deeper insights into disease mechanisms and therapeutic opportunities.

By combining Illumina’s expertise in sequencing with Nvidia’s AI-driven technologies, the collaboration will make genomic analysis more accessible to researchers, pharmaceutical companies, and life sciences customers.

Steve Barnard, Illumina’s chief technology officer, emphasized the impact of this partnership on understanding diseases through AI and multi-omics data.

He believes the collaboration will empower pharmaceutical and biotech companies to unlock the potential of their own data, improving success rates in the development of life-saving therapies.

In addition to the Illumina collaboration, Nvidia has also unveiled several other healthcare partnerships aimed at advancing AI in the life sciences.

These include collaborations with IQVIA, Mayo Clinic, and Arc Institute to use Nvidia’s technologies in drug discovery and digital pathology.

IQVIA, a leading provider of clinical research services, will utilize Nvidia’s AI Foundry service to develop foundation models and AI agents.

These models, trained on IQVIA’s extensive healthcare dataset, will streamline critical clinical trial processes, such as patient recruitment and regulatory submissions, potentially shortening the lengthy development cycle.

Mayo Clinic will integrate Nvidia’s DGX Blackwell systems into its digital pathology platform, which already houses millions of whole-slide images linked to patient records.

This collaboration is expected to aid in the creation of foundation models for pathological analysis, contributing to advancements in AI-driven diagnostics.

The Arc Institute, focused on the intersection of biology and machine learning, will work with Nvidia’s BioNeMo platform and DGX Cloud infrastructure to develop large-scale models that integrate multiple biological modalities. These models will drive research in synthetic biology and drug discovery.