Sept 9 (Reuters) - Drugmaker Eli Lilly said on

Tuesday it is launching an artificial intelligence and machine

learning platform that provides biotech companies access to drug

discovery models trained on years of its research data.

Drug developers are increasing adoption of AI technologies

for discovery and safety testing to get faster and cheaper

results, in line with an FDA push to reduce animal testing in

the near future.

Earlier in the year, Jefferies analysts had pegged

AI-related research and development spend to reach about $30

billion to $40 billion by 2040.

Lilly's platform, TuneLab, consists of AI models which

include proprietary data obtained at a cost of over $1 billion.

"Lilly TuneLab was created to be an equalizer so that

smaller companies can access some of the same AI capabilities

used every day by Lilly scientists," said chief scientific

officer Daniel Skovronsky.

Privately held companies Circle Pharma and insitro said they

are partnering with Lilly for TuneLab. Circle will be using

Lilly's platform to develop cancer therapies while insitro will

build new AI models that will be used by TuneLab for the

discovery of small molecule therapies.

TuneLab works on datasets representing experimental data

obtained with hundreds of thousands of unique molecules. In

return for access, selected biotech partners contribute training

data that can enhance the AI platform.