Phylo has entered a collaboration with Japan-based company Chugai Pharmaceutical to implement Biomni Lab, an agentic AI platform designed for biomedical research, within the latter’s drug discovery operations.

The move aims to address challenges in the sector where analytical work behind research decisions is often slow and dispersed, pushing scientists to use multiple disconnected tools and datasets.

This fragmentation can lead to underutilisation of valuable biomedical data.

Under the agreement, Chugai scientists will use Biomni Lab to consolidate AI-driven capabilities and diverse biomedical resources in a single digital workspace.

This integration aims to enable researchers to interact with proprietary data within Chugai’s secure environment, generating new hypotheses and supporting decision-making throughout the drug discovery process.

The platform is expected to be applied across several areas of Chugai’s research, such as single-cell analysis, disease biology, human genetics and target evaluation.

Chugai biological technology department head Sohei Oyama said: “We are excited about the opportunity to work with Phylo and explore the capabilities of Biomni Lab in our research environment.

“As scientific data continues to grow in scale and complexity, scientists need tools designed for the unique challenges of drug discovery research and capable of connecting insights across diverse sources of knowledge.

“We believe Biomni Lab can help our scientists explore scientific questions more effectively and accelerate our drug discovery to create innovative medicines for patients.”

Phylo co-founder and CEO Kexin Huang said: “Our vision is to help biopharma become AI-native, and Biomni Lab is built to make that transition practical for discovery teams today. Chugai's longstanding track record of R&D innovation makes it an ideal setting to demonstrate how agentic AI can accelerate breakthrough discovery.”