Century Health and Tessel Biosciences partner to apply AI-enabled real-world data to COPD drug development

The partnership will use AI-curated real-world COPD data to better characterize underserved patient subgroups and inform earlier, more targeted drug development strategies.

Century Health and Tessel Biosciences have announced a new collaboration focused on applying AI to real-world data (RWD) in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The aim is to improve characterization of patient subgroups that remain poorly understood and underserved by existing therapies. The collaboration reflects the growing interest in using AI-enabled RWD to address persistent evidence gaps in heterogeneous diseases such as COPD and to support more targeted, data-driven drug development.

COPD is a leading global cause of morbidity and mortality and, according to the World Health organization, is responsible for an estimated 3.5 million deaths worldwide in 2021. Despite substantial advances in clinical research over recent decades, significant gaps remain in understanding how the disease presents and progresses in routine care, particularly among patients with features such as mucus obstruction or non-Type 2 inflammation. These subpopulations often respond poorly to currently available inhaled therapies or biologics, underscoring an unmet need for more granular real-world insights.

Under the collaboration, Tessel will use Century Health’s COPD real-world dataset derived from electronic health records (EHRs) and unstructured clinical notes from community specialty practices. Century Health’s AI-powered platform curates and enriches fragmented clinical information, transforming it into high-quality datasets suitable for research and industry collaborations, while maintaining rigorous standards for patient privacy and data protection.

Through automating tasks such as data abstraction and enrichment, the platform reduces reliance on manual data entry and enables the systematic capture of disease characteristics that are often not visible in claims data alone. In the context of COPD, these include clinical traits such as mucus-obstructive features, airway-dominant disease, emphysema, and chronic bronchitis. This approach is intended to support faster identification of clinically relevant COPD patient subgroups and inform earlier stages of drug development.

The collaboration also complements Tessel’s drug discovery platform, Tesselogic, which integrates patient-derived organoids, machine learning, and functional phenotyping to model chronic disease. Incorporating AI-curated RWD and abstracted variables at scale is expected to unlock insights embedded in routine health records and support more precise therapeutic development.

“Working with Century Health to bring real-world evidence into early-stage drug development will help Tessel make more informed decisions as we advance our drug candidates for lung disease,” said Naren Tallapragada, PhD, chief executive officer and co-founder of Tessel Biosciences.

Vish Srivastava, co-founder and chief executive officer of Century Health, added:

“This partnership illustrates how AI-curated RWD can meaningfully inform early drug development.”