Québec, May 8, 2024 — Linearis and Mila are pleased to announce a strategic partnership to support artificial intelligence (AI) and drug discovery.
This collaboration will aim to bridge the gap between AI models and experimental laboratory results ensuring faster drug development to foster safe and effective new treatment options for cancer, diabetes and antimicrobial resistance. As part of this collaboration, Linearis will provide large and high throughput metabolomic testing and AI analysis in its new AI-omic laboratory. Mila will contribute the infrastructure to process these large, detail-rich datasets required to develop effective machine learning (ML) models of chemical treatment activity.
This initiative comes as part of the funding announcement of $574M CAD made May 6th by the Honourable Soraya Martinez Ferrada, Minister of Tourism and Minister responsible for the Economic Development Agency of Canada for the Regions of Quebec on 19 projects at five research hubs across, Canada in the biomanufacturing ecosystem.
“AI is going to be most socially helpful in domains such as the fight against antimicrobial resistance, which is a growing health threat for our planet and does not get enough attention, so I am delighted to see these investments.”- Yoshua Bengio, Scientific Director, Mila and IVADO.
The first collaborative project between Linearis and Mila is led by Yves Brun, Director (Canada 150 Research Chair in Bacterial Cell Biology, and professor at Université de Montréal) and Jacques Corbeil Co-Director (Canada Research Chair in Medical Genomics, professor at Université Laval, and CSO at Linearis). This is one of the largest pandemic preparedness initiatives gathering 21 public and private Canadian and international organizations to focus on antimicrobial resistance.
“Most promising antimicrobial compound leads are eventually dropped due to their toxicity to humans. The combination of high-throughput metabolomics data from organs-on-chips with machine learning will enable the triage of toxic compounds, thereby reducing future failure rates and overall antimicrobial development costs.” - Yves Brun, full professor, Université de Montréal.
"Antimicrobial resistance is a global threat. AI-driven monitoring of essential microbial metabolites can identify vulnerabilities for developing targeted antimicrobial drugs."- Jacques Corbeil, full professor, Université Laval & CSO, Linearis.
This private and public collaboration will leverage the recent announcement of $2.4B investment in AI infrastructure from the Government of Canada to bring AI speed to healthcare, research to patients, and expand international collaboration.
About Linearis
Linearis is transforming healthcare by merging artificial intelligence and biomarker analysis to enhance patient care with more precise, accessible prevention, detection, treatment of metabolic diseases including cancer, diabetes, and antimicrobial resistance. The team unites unparalleled, world-renowned experts in biomarker discovery, drug development, biopharma, and healthcare innovation. Alexandre Le Bouthillier, a serial AI entrepreneur and CEO, collaborates with Jacques Corbeil, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Medical Genomics and CSO, and Manon Boisclair, a global biopharma executive and COO/CCO. Together, they have discovered and internationally marketed medical diagnostics and treatments. Contributions from Yoshua Bengio, a co-father of modern AI and Turing Prize winner, David Wishart, curator of the Human Metabolome Database, bolster Linearis' efforts in providing the first certified industrial laboratory that combines high-throughput metabolomic analysis and AI.
Media Contact: Manon Boisclair, COO/CCO (media@linearis.com)
