Oracle Joins Forces With AstraZeneca to Put AI to Work in Drug Research

Oracle Corp. (NYSE:ORCL) announced Tuesday a nonbinding agreement with AstraZeneca Plc (NYSE:AZN) to explore using artificial intelligence and real-world data to improve clinical-trial recruitment and connect research findings with everyday care. Clinical Trials and Evidence Generation The companies plan to pair AstraZeneca’s scientific and therapeutic expertise with Oracle’s health data, cloud, analytics and clinical workflow capabilities. Their goals include identifying eligible patients sooner, expanding access to trials and accelerating evidence generation. Initial areas of focus could include oncology; cardiovascular, renal and metabolic diseases; respiratory and immunology; and rare diseases. The companies also intend to examine how insights from clinical research and routine care could guide future study design, safety monitoring and patient care. They plan to establish shared governance, reusable technical components and outcome measures to evaluate results. Those assessments would help determine whether successful approaches could expand across disease areas and geographies. AstraZeneca Chief Executive Officer Pascal Soriot said of the Oracle collaboration: "This unique collaboration brings leaders in healthcare and AI together at a global scale to accelerate the journey from the discovery of medicine to patient care." See More: Top Value Stocks Earlier AI Initiatives The announcement follows AstraZeneca’s agreement with Insitro to use AI to identify drug targets for liver and heart diseases. That deal includes $40 million upfront and approximately $1.46 billion in potential milestone payments, plus royalties. In August, Oracle expanded its Clinical AI Agent, adding documentation, coding, and patient-chart review tools available in the U.S. The agent can summarize medical histories, laboratory results, and medications. Recently, Novo Nordisk (NYSE:NVO) announced a collaboration with Anthropic to accelerate drug development. The companies plan to tackle drug-discovery challenges and develop workflows supporting biological reasoning, while Novo Nordisk will use Anthropic’s AI models to strengthen software development. Price Action: AstraZeneca shares were up 1.82% at $166.93 and Oracle shares were down 1.61% at $127.51 during premarket trading on Tuesday, according to Benzinga Pro data. Photo via Shutterstock Read Also: Larry Ellison’s Net Worth Plummets as Oracle Suffers $488 Billion Wipeout