AstraZeneca partners with Carterra for AI discovery

AstraZeneca has partnered with Carterra in a scientific research collaboration announced on October 7, 2026. The companies plan to develop specialized hardware and software to advance lab-in-the-loop drug discovery, combining laboratory systems, software and data infrastructure with artificial intelligence workflows.

The lab-in-the-loop approach uses artificial intelligence to propose drug candidates, tests those predictions through physical laboratory experiments, and feeds the resulting data back into AI models to guide the next round of design. Carterra engineering and software teams will work alongside AstraZeneca scientists and automation experts to produce standardized, comparable data at scale for machine learning systems.

The initiative follows broader industry attention on the methodology. A July 2026 report from Leerink Partners called lab-in-the-loop an emerging paradigm reshaping antibody discovery, while an analysis by William Blair identified it as a catalyst for expanded laboratory data generation.