Genomics launches Mystra AI platform backed by 45,000 genetic studies

Drug targets backed by human genetic evidence are 2.6 times more likely to clear clinical trials — and Genomics is betting its new AI platform can put that advantage in every scientist's hands.

Genomics, a transatlantic TechBio company, launched Mystra AI on Tuesday, a conversational platform that lets scientists query the world's largest human genetics database to discover and validate drug targets in minutes instead of months.

"Drug targets with genetic backing are 2.6 times more likely to succeed in clinical trials. Mystra AI means greater ease of access and efficiency in generating powerful genetic insights to power drug target discovery," Professor Sir Peter Donnelly, chief executive officer and co-founder at Genomics, said.

The platform draws on a decade of data collection encompassing more than 45,000 genome-wide association studies and trillions of rows of genotype-phenotype data. Genomics has already identified more than 100 drug targets for diseases including cancer, heart disease and diabetes using this dataset. Mystra AI processes plain-language questions and returns answers with supporting visuals and data from the company's proprietary tools, ensuring outputs are reproducible and verifiable.

The pharmaceutical industry spends more than $2.3 billion on average to bring a single drug to market, with 95 percent of candidates failing in clinical trials. By giving scientists access to genetic evidence earlier in the discovery process, Mystra AI could help partners cut those failure rates and redirect billions in R&D spending toward higher-probability targets.

The platform has already attracted adoption from major pharmaceutical companies and emerging biotechs. Novo Nordisk, which previously attempted to build its own internal genetics platform, partnered with Genomics after concluding that internal software engineering could not match the company's capabilities. "Genetics is one of those really pivotal tools. We tried to build our own platform internally, but we're not as good at software engineering as maybe other companies are, and so we partnered with Genomics," Mishal Patel, global vice president of AI and digital innovation at Novo Nordisk, said.

BridgeBio Pharma and Relation Therapeutics are also early adopters. Xue Zeng, associate director of statistical genetics at BridgeBio, said Mystra AI is "accelerating our day-to-day workflow by making it much easier and more efficient to mine genomics data." David Roblin, chief executive officer of Relation Therapeutics, said the platform allows his R&D teams to "explore and evaluate biological insights efficiently and at pace."

Rowland Illing, chief medical officer at Amazon Web Services, described the platform as transformational. "In real time, you can do the work of an entire PhD in minutes," he said.

Genomics offers three engagement models: a self-service SaaS tier for direct platform access, a partly managed option where partners can combine proprietary internal data with Genomics' datasets, and a fully managed service that taps the company's team of more than 60 statistical genetic scientists.

The company was spun out of the University of Oxford in 2014 and has been named to the Sunday Times 100Tech list of Britain's fastest-growing private tech companies for two consecutive years.

Genomics is privately held, but its platform's rapid adoption by Novo Nordisk, BridgeBio and others signals growing demand for AI tools that reduce drug development risk. For publicly traded partners like Novo Nordisk, faster target validation could compress R&D timelines and improve pipeline returns. The broader trend — AI converging with genomics to tackle the pharmaceutical industry's 95 percent clinical failure rate — positions companies with proprietary genetic datasets as potential acquisition targets for larger pharma groups seeking to internalize these capabilities.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.