Accenture Invests in Turbine to Accelerate Use of AI-Powered Cell Simulations for Biopharma Research and Development
Accenture has invested in Turbine, a company specializing in predictive simulations for biopharma research, through Accenture Ventures.
This investment aims to enhance Turbine's Simulated Cell platform, which uses machine learning to simulate cellular processes, providing insights that could accelerate drug development.
The platform can predict drug efficacy and identify potential targets, benefiting biopharma companies by streamlining research and improving patient outcomes.
The financial terms of the investment were not disclosed.
- Accenture's investment bolsters Turbine's ability to provide AI-powered biological insights for drug development.
- Turbine's Simulated Cell platform can perform large-scale virtual experiments, aiding in the discovery of hidden biological mechanisms.
- The platform is already being validated by leading pharma companies, enhancing its credibility.
- Accenture's support may expand Turbine's market reach and improve its platform's capabilities.
- Accenture Ventures' Project Spotlight provides Turbine with access to Accenture's expertise and enterprise clients.
- The financial terms of the investment were not disclosed, leaving investors uncertain about the scale of the commitment.
- The success of the AI-driven Simulated Cell platform is still contingent on further validation and real-world application.
- The platform's ability to replace or supplement traditional wet lab experiments has not yet been fully proven.
Insights
The strategic investment by Accenture in Turbine is noteworthy for the potential financial implications and strategic alignment within the biopharma sector. From a financial perspective, Accenture's backing likely represents confidence in Turbine's technology and its market potential, which could attract further investments and strategic partnerships. Investors should observe how this partnership influences Turbine's revenue growth, market reach and overall valuation. Additionally, as Accenture Ventures is known for its selective investments in disruptive technologies, this move could signal strong growth prospects for Turbine, potentially boosting investor sentiment towards Accenture as well. However, the exact financial terms were not disclosed, making it challenging to quantify the immediate impact on Accenture's balance sheet.
Rating: 1 (Positive)
Turbine's Simulated Cell™ platform leverages advanced AI and machine learning to model molecular interactions, representing a significant leap forward in biopharma research. This platform can conduct virtual experiments at a scale unattainable in physical labs, which could drastically accelerate drug discovery by revealing new drug targets and optimizing combination therapies. For retail investors, it's essential to understand that such technology can reduce the time and cost associated with bringing new drugs to market, thereby enhancing the profitability and success rates of biopharma projects. The AI-driven approach also positions Turbine well in an industry increasingly reliant on digital solutions, suggesting a competitive edge over traditional methods.
Rating: 1 (Positive)
From a medical research standpoint, Turbine's Simulated Cell™ platform could revolutionize how we understand and treat complex diseases. The ability to model diverse biological systems virtually can uncover insights that are otherwise lost in traditional in vitro and in vivo studies, which are often limited by scale and scope. This technology could lead to more personalized medicine approaches by identifying patient populations that would benefit the most from specific therapies, thereby improving treatment outcomes. For stakeholders in the biopharma industry, this means potential cost savings in R&D and higher success rates for clinical trials. Retail investors should note the long-term benefits of these advancements, as they can lead to breakthroughs in treatments that were previously unattainable.
Rating: 1 (Positive)
Accenture has made a strategic investment, through Accenture Ventures, in Turbine, a predictive simulation company that is building a platform for interpreting human biology. (Graphic: Business Wire)
Turbine’s core technology, the Simulated Cell™ platform, utilizes machine learning to understand how human cells make decisions. The platform intricately models molecular interactions within and around cells, enabling virtual experiments in volumes that are nearly impossible to achieve in the physical world and revealing mechanisms that drive diseases and response to therapies.
“Advanced technology and digital capabilities are clearly becoming substantial differentiators in the biopharma industry, and the future of drug discovery will be powered by AI,” said Tom Lounibos, global lead of Accenture Ventures. “Turbine’s AI-based platform has clearly demonstrated the ability to unlock high-quality biological insights for our clients across the biopharma industry.”
Turbine’s platform is being validated with leading pharma companies to uncover promising drug targets, select patient populations most likely to benefit from therapy, and identify combination therapy regimens that can increase therapeutic benefit in certain patients. This allows Turbine to reveal treatments otherwise hidden from view, as well as potential drugs that work in the lab but would likely fail in clinical trials.
Petra Jantzer, Ph.D., a senior managing director and global lead of the Accenture Life Sciences business, said, “Turbine's Simulated Cell™ platform has emerged as a valuable tool for global biopharma companies to gain insights into the intricacies of biological systems, which can lead to the development of targeted treatments. Our investment reflects our commitment to supporting technology and digital capabilities that drive innovation in AI-based drug discovery, all with the goal of providing more effective treatments and enhancing patient care.”
“Since most unsolved complex diseases are heterogenous, progress in utilizing AI for drug discovery is hindered by ethical and technological limitations in sourcing deep and diverse ground truth data. To bridge this gap, we need a toolkit that can learn fundamental rules of biology on in vitro experiments and apply to patients that it has never seen before. Turbine's Simulated Cells can be engineered at scale to represent the heterogeneity of complex human disease better than currently available wet lab experimental models, which are inherently biased towards representing certain disease types and hardly scalable,” said Szabolcs Nagy, co-founder and CEO of Turbine. “By tapping into Accenture’s expertise, we hope to expand our market reach and augment our simulation platform in order to benefit the whole biopharma industry by ensuring that the next experiment is always the correct one.”
Turbine is the latest company to join Accenture Ventures’ Project Spotlight, an engagement and investment program focused on working with companies that create or apply disruptive enterprise technologies. Project Spotlight offers extensive access to Accenture’s domain expertise and its enterprise clients, helping startups harness creativity and deliver on the promise of their technology. Additional digital simulation companies in Project Spotlight include QuantHealth, Virtonomy and Ocean Genomics.
Terms of the investment were not disclosed.
About Accenture
Accenture is a leading global professional services company that helps the world’s leading businesses, governments and other organizations build their digital core, optimize their operations, accelerate revenue growth and enhance citizen services—creating tangible value at speed and scale. We are a talent- and innovation-led company with approximately 742,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Technology is at the core of change today, and we are one of the world’s leaders in helping drive that change, with strong ecosystem relationships. We combine our strength in technology and leadership in cloud, data and AI with unmatched industry experience, functional expertise and global delivery capability. We are uniquely able to deliver tangible outcomes because of our broad range of services, solutions and assets across Strategy & Consulting, Technology, Operations, Industry X and Song. These capabilities, together with our culture of shared success and commitment to creating 360° value, enable us to help our clients reinvent and build trusted, lasting relationships. We measure our success by the 360° value we create for our clients, each other, our shareholders, partners and communities. Visit us at www.accenture.com.
About Turbine
Countless resources and time get expended globally to research and advance novel therapies that end in clinical failure and no patient benefit. Imagine a world where it is possible to predict any potential drug’s effect on translatable biological models – including those that may not even be available for lab-based testing – while accurately representing patient biology. Turbine is revolutionizing the status quo by working to ensure that we always run the right wet lab experiments.
With machine learning that understands the logic by which human cells make decisions, Turbine has built the world’s first predictive simulation of patient biology. The Simulated Cell™ platform models the protein signaling that decides cell fate and facilitates in silico experiments at scales that are impossible in the physical world, to empower the biopharma industry by guiding experiments that identify and confirm disease driving mechanisms.
Turbine’s platform is being validated with leading pharma companies such as AstraZeneca, Ono Pharmaceutical, Cancer Research Horizons, and Bayer. In addition, Turbine has received funding from industry leaders such as MSD (Merck & Co, Inc.
For more information, visit www.turbine.ai or follow Turbine on LinkedIn.
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View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240516190500/en/
Julie Bennink
Accenture
+1 312 693 7301
julie.l.bennink@accenture.com
Bálint Paholcsek
Turbine
+36 30 675 7099
balint.paholcsek@turbine.ai
Source: Accenture
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