Officially unveiled at the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG) 2025 meeting held in Boston, Genomics has launched Mystra, an AI-enabled human genetics platform designed to accelerate drug target discovery and clinical validation. This milestone marks a major leap forward in precision healthcare tools, offering life sciences companies a scalable solution to harness multiomic data for real-time decision-making in drug development.
The launch comes at a critical moment for the pharmaceutical industry, which is grappling with a severe R&D productivity crisis. With clinical trial failure rates approaching 90% and average development costs beyond $2.3 billion, drug R&D remains a high-risk, high-cost endeavor. These inefficiencies not only inflate prices but also restrict or delay access to life-saving treatments. Genomics aims to reverse this trend by equipping researchers with a platform built on a powerful insight: drug targets backed by human genetic evidence are 2.6 times more likely to succeed in clinical trials.
Founded in 2014 by four leading geneticists from the University of Oxford, Genomics is a pioneering techbio company that uses large-scale genetic information to transform drug discovery. Over the past decade, the company has built the world’s largest and most diverse genotype-phenotype database, harmonizing trillions of data points across more than 20,000 genome-wide association studies (GWAS). Mystra is the culmination of this effort—an AI-powered platform designed to make human genetics actionable at scale.
“For over a decade, we have been meticulously building and using an unparalleled platform of genetic insights to accelerate our own collaborations with biopharma partners,” said Dave Thornton, president of Genomics. “Today, we are making this breakthrough technology available to the statistical geneticists throughout the R&D community.”
Mystra integrates proprietary datasets, advanced algorithms, and machine learning tools to deliver insights into disease mechanisms. It turns what was once a fragmented, specialist-driven process into a high-speed, collaborative capability. Researchers can now assess the efficacy and safety of drug candidates, run complex genetic analyses in a shorter timespan, and make earlier, stronger decisions in target identification, validation, and clinical trial design.
The platform offers flexible engagement models to suit different R&D needs:
Self-service (SaaS) for direct access to Mystra’s analysis tools and datasets
Partly managed for combining internal data with Genomics’ resources
Fully managed for deep collaboration with Genomics’ team of over 60 statistical geneticists
Already in use by several pharmaceutical companies through an early-access program, Mystra is poised to become a foundational tool across the drug development lifecycle. Its multi-modal capabilities will continue to expand. Thornton emphasized the platform’s transformative potential: “Mystra transforms fragmented data into actionable, high-conviction insights… We are changing the trajectory of drug development—to bring tomorrow’s medicine for the patients of today, safer and faster.”
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