Four pharma giants join Apheris consortium to train AI on 10,000 antibodies

AbbVie, argenx, Lundbeck and Takeda have joined Berlin-based Apheris and Ginkgo Datapoints in a new Antibody Developability Consortium, training AI on roughly 10,000 antibody sequences to predict which drug candidates can be manufactured and reach the clinic.

Each member contributes proprietary sequences and trains models inside its own environment via Apheris's federated infrastructure, without raw sequences being exposed to other members. Ginkgo Datapoints fills remaining capacity from public sources and runs wet-lab characterisation; the initial dataset is due to members by early 2027.

The consortium has just kicked off and has released no model performance data. Charlotte Deane of Oxford and Peter Tessier of the University of Michigan provide independent scientific oversight.