Université Paris-Saclay and Owkin: An Unprecedented Alliance to elevate academic medical research to the European forefront through AI

Through initiatives such as the Paris-Saclay Cancer Cluster and the European University Alliance for Global Health (EUGLOH), which it coordinates, Université Paris-Saclay promotes cross-cutting links between research, education, and innovation, while fostering public-private collaborations to translate scientific discoveries into tangible applications. It is within this framework of open, impact-driven innovation that the collaboration with Owkin, a pioneer in artificial intelligence applied to biology, takes place.

K Pro Free: the AI assistant transforming the way science is conducted

Developed by Owkin, the K Pro Free platform enables the student and scientific community to explore health data directly in natural language, without the need to master complex programming languages. Drawing on 19 biomedical databases and 26.5 million scientific articles, this intelligent conversational assistant can reduce the average duration of certain tasks performed by biomedical researchers by a factor of 20. It also provides access to the MOSAIC Window dataset, a subset of the world’s largest spatial transcriptomics database in oncology. By making patient and scientific data accessible and comprehensible, K Pro Free democratises the use of AI, allowing users to answer complex biological questions in real time. For students and early-career researchers, it represents an unprecedented educational and exploratory tool. For start-ups and emerging laboratories within the Paris-Saclay ecosystem, it serves as an immediate innovation lever, facilitating the integration of AI into scientific projects and promoting cross-disciplinary collaboration.

An agreement to explore, educate, and innovate

The memorandum signed between the two partners provides for the provision of K Pro Free to the entire Université Paris-Saclay community, with particular emphasis on faculty researchers, researchers, and doctoral candidates whose work falls within the platform’s application domain. It includes the creation of workshops, training sessions, and events designed to promote the exploration and adoption of the platform, as well as the co-organisation of communication and dissemination initiatives related to the use of AI in healthcare. These mutually beneficial activities will not only serve to train users, but also to continually enrich and improve the platform’s models through feedback and practical use cases from the Université Paris-Saclay community. This non-binding, two-year memorandum represents the first step in a strategic partnership, aiming to establish a sustainable model of AI-augmented research.

"Having access to Owkin’s K Pro Free platform is a tremendous opportunity for the student and scientific community at Université Paris-Saclay, who will be able to freely utilise the functionalities of a tool specifically designed for biomedical research, offering unique capabilities and scientific rigour that far exceed those of general-purpose large language models," said Marc Humbert, Dean of the Paris-Saclay Faculty of Medicine.

"Being a research-intensive university requires offering our student and academic community both outstanding knowledge and innovative resources. By making the K Pro Free platform available in our research laboratories, we are adopting a pioneering approach that enables each talent to perform at their best. Moreover, the intersection of AI and healthcare represents a rapidly growing field of research. This partnership is mutually beneficial and is intended to pave the way for further public–private collaborations in the interest of our communities," said Camille Galap, President of Université Paris-Saclay.

"Being the first in Europe to launch a public–private collaboration of this scope with an outstanding university such as Paris-Saclay is a great source of pride for us. K Pro Free has been designed to reduce the duration of key scientific tasks by a factor of twenty, enabling everyone - students, researchers, clinical staff, or start-ups - to interact directly with biomedical data. Collaborating with Université Paris-Saclay represents a strong commitment to bringing science, education, and innovation closer together," said Thomas Clozel, co-founder and CEO of Owkin.

Towards research that is more open, faster, and more collaborative

By combining the academic excellence of Université Paris-Saclay with Owkin’s technological expertise, this collaboration paves the way for a new generation of biomedical research that is more fluid, better connected, and more inclusive. It will help position French scientific research at the forefront of innovation by fully integrating AI into research and training practices. The university’s scientific, student, and entrepreneurial communities will benefit from privileged access to an artificial superintelligence designed to accelerate scientific discovery and support the emergence of major innovations in the healthcare sector.