Merck, a leading science and technology company, has announced a collaboration with Iktos for the use of its generative modelling artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Iktos is a French start-up company specialised in the development of artificial intelligence solutions applied to chemical research, more specifically medicinal chemistry and new drug design.

The agreement is in order to facilitate the rapid and cost-effective discovery and design of promising new compounds.

Iktos’ AI technology, which is based on deep generative models, helps bring speed and efficiency to the drug discovery process, by automatically designing virtual novel molecules that have desired activities for treating a given disease, the company said in a statement.

The two companies aim to tackle one of the key challenges in drug design: rapid identification of molecules which simultaneously satisfy multiple drug-like criteria for clinical testing.

The technology is already successfully established in other fields, such as image processing and automatic translation, but has only recently been applied to chemistry.

“This agreement is another illustration of how we aim to enrich our discovery engine with strategic technology-focused collaborations,” said Belén Garijo, member of the executive board and CEO healthcare, Merck.

“We are thrilled that Merck is collaborating with Iktos to further accelerate its drug discovery capabilities,” commented Yann Gaston-Mathé, president and CEO of Iktos.