Schrödinger and BMS expand partnership to deploy AI for drug discovery

This initiative builds on an established partnership between the two companies, under which BMS already utilises Schrödinger’s computational platform for drug discovery projects.

The new arrangement will extend the use of Schrödinger’s technologies, including Bunsen and the AI-driven synthesis planning platform RetroSynth, throughout BMS’s scientific teams.

The collaboration aims to enable the pharmaceutical company’s researchers to explore chemical space more extensively, prioritise molecular candidates with additional confidence, and support decision-making in the early stages of drug discovery.

Bunsen is an agentic AI co-scientist tailored to perform complex molecular discovery workflows by executing Schrödinger’s computational methods, conducting planning and interpretation tasks, and integrating with other research technologies.

Schrödinger platform chief scientific officer Robert Abel said: “BMS is a long-standing customer and collaborator, and they have been an industry leader in integrating computation into drug discovery.

“We are thrilled they are deploying Bunsen at a large scale. Adopting Bunsen and our computational platform at scale will empower a broader group of scientists to embrace a predict-first computational approach.”

BMS computational sciences vice-president Stephen Johnson said: “Over the past several years, AI has become a key enabler for our scientists, allowing them to scale their creativity and scientific expertise across our research organisation.

“Bunsen is another capability we are adding to that toolkit, one that allows our scientists to think differently about how physics-based tools can be used to navigate molecular design space and accelerate the discovery of innovative medicines for patients.”

Schrödinger reports that its software platform combines AI with physics-based simulation to support hypothesis evaluation and synthetic feasibility in molecular research.

Included in the expanded agreement, RetroSynth is described as enabling high-throughput evaluation of chemical synthesis pathways.

The company’s computational solutions are licensed by customers in the global pharmaceutical, biotechnology, industrial, and academic sectors.

Last month, BMS further established itself on the growing list of big pharma partners who are forging tight collaborations with big tech, as it deepens its collaborations with Nvidia to deploy an AI-enabled supercomputer that it claims is the “most powerful single-owned Nvidia infrastructure in life sciences”.