Shares of Eli Lilly (NYSE:LLY) gained in today’s trading after the healthcare company announced a partnership with Microsoft-backed OpenAI (NASDAQ:MSFT). The firms will work together to create new drugs to fight drug-resistant pathogens with the help of artificial intelligence.
This partnership is aimed at addressing the serious global health threat of antimicrobial resistance (AMR), which is a top public health concern worldwide. Indeed, pathogens evolve relatively quickly and tend to become harder to treat as time goes on. Therefore, it’s crucial to develop new treatments in order to continue fighting off diseases.
Diogo Rau, Lilly’s executive VP, believes this partnership represents a significant step in fighting AMR by accelerating the discovery of new drugs, and there seems to be a lot of merit to that belief. In fact, a recent study pointed to promising results for AI-discovered drugs, which boast an 80%–90% success rate in Phase 1 clinical trials.
Eli Lilly plans to develop new antibiotics by 2030 to tackle drug-resistant infections as it looks to build on top of its recent success with weight loss drugs.
Is LLY Stock a Buy?
Analysts remain bullish on LLY stock with a Strong Buy consensus rating based on 16 Buys and three Holds assigned in the past three months. Year-to-date, LLY has increased by more than 55%, and the average LLY price target of $882.50 implies a downside risk of 2.1% from current levels.
