Thirty percent of regulatory approvals by the FDA in recent years have been for new uses of previously approved drugs and vaccines1. A repurposing approach to drug discovery and development is intended to streamline the time- and cost-intensive process of bringing new therapies to market, which can take the industry up to 20 years and cost in excess of $2.5 billion. Medicines that have regulatory clearance have been comprehensively tested, resulting in known safety and efficacy profiles which may significantly reduce the drug development burden. New uses, formulations and delivery innovations for previously approved medicines have the potential to come to market quickly and efficiently and address unmet medical needs.

Currently, the discovery of new therapeutic uses for existing medicines is largely the result of serendipitous findings or isolated research. The aim of the new collaboration between Teva and IBM Research is to design, build, and deploy a systematic process for drug repurposing, potentially becoming a blueprint for use across the industry. The process will combine human insight with unique machine-learning algorithms and real-world evidence accessed through the IBM Watson Health Cloud. IBM Watson Health Cloud technology will be applied on a massive scale with the aim of revealing previously hidden correlations between a drug molecule and health conditions.


“Teva is a leader in innovation using existing molecules and IBM has pioneered Watson cognitive computing – it is a natural partnership,” said Michael Hayden, Teva's President of Global R&D and Chief Scientific Officer. “This collaboration will bring together the science and the technology to scale up ‘serendipity’ to an industrial level, opening up new and exciting possibilities to create novel treatments for patients based on existing medicines.”

“There is so much data out there that is currently underutilized, yet has the potential to significantly inform drug repurposing. Eighty percent of all health data is invisible to current technology systems because it’s unstructured,” said Ajay Royyuru, IBM Fellow and Director of Healthcare & Life Sciences for IBM Research. “Using cognitive technologies to mine this data could reveal novel therapies for diseases that desperately need tackling. By teaming up with Teva, our belief is we will gain insights that can lead pharmaceutical companies to develop new medicines that benefit patients worldwide.”

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