Lantern Pharma, a leader in AI-driven precision oncology, has announced the launch of its AI Center of Excellence and Advanced Agentic Labs in Bengaluru, marking a major leap from pioneering AI-enabled cancer drug discovery to industrial-scale global deployment.

 

The new center will act as Lantern’s global hub for scaling its AI platform, RADR, providing expanded computational capacity, specialized talent, and follow-the-sun development cycles to accelerate drug discovery for both internal programs and international collaborators.

 

The Bengaluru facility will strengthen RADR’s capabilities, which leverage hundreds of billions of oncology-focused data points, sophisticated machine learning algorithms, and curated disease models. The center will also accelerate development of Lantern’s specialized large language model (LLM) for generating and optimizing novel molecular candidates, alongside large quantitative models (LQMs) for bioinformatics and medicinal chemistry reasoning.

 

It will be a two-phase strategic rollout.

 

Phase 1 involves industrializing AI-driven cancer drug development. Lantern will initially focus on scaling its multi-agentic AI platform for oncology, refining algorithmic systems that handle data aggregation, predictive modeling, biomarker discovery, and clinical trial optimization. 

 

Key priorities include advancing LLM and LQM for molecular assessment, optimization, and de novo generation across cancer subtypes, including rare cancers; expanding molecular feature prediction, including blood-brain barrier permeability for CNS-targeted therapies; refining combination regimen design and synergy prediction.

 

Enhancing biomarker discovery and patient stratification to streamline clinical trials and 

integrating multi-omic data across internal and collaborative initiatives are the others.

 

Phase 2 includes multi-disease expansion and global revenue acceleration. Building on oncology success, Lantern will expand RADR into inflammation, immunology, and neurodegenerative diseases, creating disease-specific AI modules for lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and Alzheimer’s, while driving revenue with global biopharma partners.

 

CEO Panna Sharma said: "Lantern was founded on the conviction that artificial intelligence and data-driven methodologies can fundamentally redefine drug discovery paradigms. Our AI Center of Excellence represents the industrialization of that vision—scaling proven RADR capabilities to serve the growing number of pharmaceutical partners seeking precision, data-guided therapies across oncology and beyond with increasingly more aggressive timelines. 

 

"This initiative strategically positions Lantern at the forefront of the pharmaceutical industry's transformation from computational experimentation to systematic, AI-powered therapeutic development that addresses critical unmet patient needs globally. Our approach simultaneously plays a central role in containing development costs and increasing R&D efficiency."

 

Board Member Dr Vijay Chandru added:

"We have reached a defining inflection point where artificial intelligence, genomic science, and clinical data are converging to fundamentally transform drug discovery from empirical experimentation to systematic, data-driven precision. 

 

"Bengaluru represents one of the rare global ecosystems possessing the complete technical infrastructure required to lead this transformation... Lantern's establishment of its AI Center of Excellence here is strategically significant—it demonstrates that Bengaluru has evolved beyond pilot-phase experimentation and is now positioned to industrialize AI-powered therapeutic development at global scale."

 

Sharma emphasized the operational impact of the hub: "The Bengaluru hub will serve as a central scale-up center for our AI engine, creating unprecedented operational leverage and research efficiency. By accessing India's exceptional ecosystem of AI engineers, data scientists, and computational biologists, we're building infrastructure that enables continuous development cycles, accelerated deployment timelines, and cost-effective scaling of our computational capabilities. 

 

"The center positions Lantern to develop and deploy advanced agentic AI modules at the speed and scale our pharmaceutical partners demand, while maintaining the scientific rigor and precision-focused methodologies that define our approach. This is about systematic execution—translating complex computational insights into tangible therapeutic solutions that address critical unmet medical needs across multiple disease categories where data-driven precision creates transformative patient outcomes and redefines what's possible in modern drug discovery."