Mila partners with AbCellera to help bring new treatments to patients faster
MONTREAL, QC, September 23, 2022 – Mila – Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute announced today that AbCellera, a Vancouver-based technology company that helps to discover new antibody-based medicines and bring them to patients faster, has joined its community of industrial partners.
AbCellera’s technology, which combines data science, machine learning (ML), bioinformatics, high-throughput microfluidics, and genomics, generates large volumes of complex, purposeful data that is making drug development faster, more efficient, and more accessible. AbCellera has invested approximately $500 million in its technology platform and is building a tech hub in Vancouver where leading data science, ML, engineering, bioscience, and clinical manufacturing are solving key challenges to accelerate the discovery of new medicines. Currently, more than 25% of AbCellera’s R&D team is dedicated to software development, data science, and ML.
“Health is one of Mila’s key interests and focus areas. We are excited to welcome AbCellera in our community. AbCellera is a Canadian company using machine learning to help bring new medicines to patients,” said Stéphane Létourneau, Mila’s Executive Vice President.
“For the past 10 years, AbCellera has been leveraging machine learning to answer impactful questions that are making a meaningful difference in the lives of patients,” says Kevin Jepson, Machine Learning Lead at AbCellera. “We’re excited to contribute to the Mila community and look forward to collaborating with Mila’s renowned experts, leveraging its training programs, and connecting with the top-tier Artificial Intelligence talent.”
AbCellera has partnered with over 35 pharmaceutical and biotech companies to work on more than 165 programs. AbCellera brought two antibody treatments against COVID-19 to the clinic in under a year, including the world’s first monoclonal antibody therapy authorized in the United States and Canada. AbCellera’s second COVID-19 treatment, bebtelovimab, continues to be used to combat the virus and is currently the most potent COVID-19 antibody treatment available. To date, more than 2.5 million patients have received these treatments, saving tens of thousands of lives.
About AbCellera
AbCellera is a technology company that searches, decodes, and analyzes natural immune systems to find antibodies that its partners can develop into drugs to prevent and treat disease. AbCellera partners with drug developers of all sizes, from large pharmaceutical to small biotechnology companies, empowering them to move quickly, reduce costs, and tackle the toughest problems in drug development. To learn more, please visit us at www.abcellera.com.
To learn about current opportunities at AbCellera: www.abcellera.com/careers#focus-big-data-machine-learning
AbCellera Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The forward-looking statements are based on management’s current beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to management. All statements contained in this release other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements, including statements regarding our ability to develop, commercialize and achieve market acceptance of our current and planned products and services, our research and development efforts, and other matters regarding our business strategies, use of capital, results of operations and financial position, and plans and objectives for future operations.
In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by the words “may,” “will,” “could,” “would,” “should,” “expect,” “intend,” “plan,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “predict,” “project,” “potential,” “continue,” “ongoing” or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology, although not all forward-looking statements contain these words. These statements involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements to be materially different from the information expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. These risks, uncertainties and other factors are described under “Risk Factors,” “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and elsewhere in the documents we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time. We caution you that forward-looking statements are based on a combination of facts and factors currently known by us and our projections of the future, about which we cannot be certain. As a result, the forward-looking statements may not prove to be accurate. The forward-looking statements in this press release represent our views as of the date hereof. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statements for any reason, except as required by law.
About Mila
Founded by Professor Yoshua Bengio of the University of Montreal, Mila is an artificial intelligence research institute that brings together over 1,000 researchers specializing in machine learning. Based in Montreal, Mila’s mission is to be a global hub for scientific advances that inspire innovation and development of AI for the benefit of all. Mila is a non-profit organization recognized worldwide for its significant contributions to the field of deep learning, particularly in language modeling, machine translation, object recognition, and generative models.
