Phylo and Chugai partner to advance AI agents in drug discovery

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. and TOKYO, Aug. 4, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Phylo, Inc. today announced a collaboration with Chugai Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. to deploy Biomni Lab, Phylo's agentic AI platform for biomedical research, across Chugai's drug discovery workflows.

This partnership addresses a familiar bottleneck in modern drug discovery: Analytical work behind every research decision is slow and fragmented, forcing scientists to move constantly between disconnected tools, datasets, and methods. As a result, valuable biomedical data too often sits static and underused.

As an Integrated Biology Environment, Biomni Lab brings best-in-class AI capabilities and hundreds of biomedical resources into one workspace, giving each Chugai scientist a collaborator across the discovery process. By connecting with proprietary research data inside Chugai's secure environment, Biomni agents turn that data into stronger hypotheses and better-supported decisions, helping Chugai shorten discovery timelines and improve the probability of success in its programs. Biomni Lab will support Chugai's work across multiple areas of drug discovery, including single-cell analysis, human genetics, disease biology, and target evaluation.

"We are excited about the opportunity to work with Phylo and explore the capabilities of Biomni Lab in our research environment. As scientific data continues to grow in scale and complexity, scientists need tools designed for the unique challenges of drug discovery research and capable of connecting insights across diverse sources of knowledge. We believe Biomni Lab can help our scientists explore scientific questions more effectively and accelerate our drug discovery to create innovative medicines for patients." said Sohei Oyama, Head of Biological Technology Dept. at Chugai.

"Chugai's scientists were some of Biomni's earliest users following our open-source release and we're excited to bring our full platform to even more scientists through this partnership," said Kexin Huang, Ph.D., Co-Founder & CEO of Phylo. "Our vision is to help biopharma become AI-native, and Biomni Lab is built to make that transition practical for discovery teams today. Chugai's longstanding track record of R&D innovation makes it an ideal setting to demonstrate how agentic AI can accelerate breakthrough discovery."

Chugai joins Phylo's founding customers, a select group of research organizations defining how agentic AI transforms drug discovery.

About Phylo and Biomni Lab

Phylo, Inc. is an applied AI research lab dedicated to agentic biology. The team is building Biomni Lab, an Integrated Biology Environment where scientists work with AI agents to make more discoveries, faster. It is publicly available today at https://phylo.bio.

To learn more about bringing Biomni Lab to your organization, reach out to [email protected].

About Chugai Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd.

Chugai Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, is a research-based pharmaceutical company with world-class drug discovery capabilities, including proprietary antibody engineering technologies. Chugai is committed to creating innovative pharmaceutical products that may satisfy unmet medical needs. Chugai is listed on the Prime Market of the Tokyo Stock Exchange. While maintaining autonomy and management independence, Chugai is an important member of the Roche Group. Additional information is available at https://www.chugai-pharm.co.jp/english/ 

SOURCE Phylo, Inc.