MIT School of Engineering and Takeda Pharmaceuticals Company Limited announced a partnership that will focus on driving to drive innovation and application of new AI applications for healthcare and drug development.

The new program will be based within MIT’s Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health (J-Clinic) – which specializes in developing new healthcare AI tools – and will leverage knowledge from both organizations with the support of an initial three-year investment from Takeda.

Via the partnership, MIT will have access to pharmaceutical infrastructure and expertise, allowing researchers to focus on challenges with practical and lasting impact. A new educational program offered through J-Clinic will enable Takeda to learn from and engage with researchers from MIT and offer insights that will advance healthcare.

“We are thrilled to create this collaboration with Takeda,” says Anantha Chandrakasan, dean of MIT’s School of Engineering, in a statement. “The MIT-Takeda Program will build a community dedicated to the next generation of AI and system-level breakthroughs that aim to advance healthcare around the globe.”

The MIT-Takeda Program will support MIT students, staff, faculty, and researchers across the Institute who are working at the intersection of AI and human health. It will merge different disciplines, theory and practical implementation, and algorithm and hardware innovations while also aiming to create new, multidimensional collaborations between academia and industry.

“We share with MIT a vision where next-generation intelligent technologies can be better developed and applied across the entire health care ecosystem,” says Anne Heatherington, senior vice president and head of Data Sciences Institute (DSI) at Takeda. “Together, we are creating an incredible opportunity to support research, enhance the drug development process, and build a better future for patients.”

According to the new partners, the MIT-Takeda Program will fund 6-10 flagship research projects per year in machine learning and healthcare, focusing on areas such as disease diagnosis, prediction of treatment response, development of novel biomarkers, process control and improvement, drug discovery, and clinical trial optimization.

The program will also provide eleven annual fellowships that will support graduate students working at the intersection of AI and health, creating significant programming for young students. 

Moreover, Takeda employees will be able to boost individual and organizational learning in integrating AI and machine learning technologies into practical solutions.