MEDTECH
Arctoris | September 14, 2021
IBM Research and Arctoris announced they are investigating the application of AI and automation to accelerate closed loop molecule discovery. IBM Research has developed RXN for Chemistry, an online platform leveraging state-of-the-art Natural Language Processing (NLP) architectures to automate synthetic chemistry. Representing chemical reactions via SMILES (Simplified Molecular Input Line Entry System), the system is able to perform highly accurate reaction predictions using its powerful AI. Optimised synthetic routes are then used as input for RoboRXN, an automated platform for molecule synthesis.
Arctoris has developed Ulysses, an end-to-end automated platform for drug discovery research. The platform ensures accuracy, precision, and reproducibility by leveraging robotic experiment execution and digital data capture technologies across cell and molecular biology and biochemistry/biophysics. Experiments conducted with Ulysses generate more than 100 times more datapoints per assay compared to industry standard, leading to deeper insights and accelerated progress compared to manual methods.
The two platforms are now being combined for the first time in a research collaboration that will see new small molecule inhibitors for undisclosed targets being designed, made, tested, and analysed (DMTA) in an autonomous, closed loop approach. Concretely, IBM Research will design and synthesize novel chemical matter (Design, Make), to be profiled and evaluated by Arctoris (Test, Analyze), with the resulting data informing the subsequent iteration of the DMTA cycle.
The collaboration is currently on-going; financial terms were not disclosed.
About IBM Research
For more than seven decades, IBM Research has defined the future of information technology with more than 3,000 researchers in 16 locations across five continents. Scientists from IBM Research have produced six Nobel Laureates, 10 U.S. National Medals of Technology, five U.S. National Medals of Science, six Turing Awards, 19 inductees in the National Academy of Sciences and 20 inductees into the U.S. National Inventors Hall of Fame.
About Arctoris
Arctoris is a biotechnology company founded and headquartered in Oxford with additional operations in Boston and Singapore. Ulysses, the unique technology platform developed by Arctoris, enables the company to conduct its R&D – from target via hit and lead to candidate – significantly faster, and with considerably improved data quality and depth. With its robotics, Arctoris generates richer, more reliable data, enabling better decisions both in human-driven and computational drug discovery, leading to higher success rates and an accelerated progression of programs towards the clinic. Led by an experienced team, Arctoris pursues its internal pipeline of small molecule inhibitors in different indications, and also partners with other biotech and pharma companies for small molecule and biologics discovery, with partners in the US, UK, Germany, Australia, Korea, China, and several other countries.
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CELL AND GENE THERAPY
Neurophth | January 19, 2021
Neurophth Therapeutics, Inc., a subsidiary of Wuhan Neurophth Biotechnology Ltd. gene therapy organization, and AAVnerGene Inc., a practicing AAV innovation organization, reports a strategic partnership to provide Neurophth with overall rights to commonly choose adeno-associated virus (AAV) capsids for the next generation ophthalmic gene therapy.
AAVnerGene's Tissue-specific, Highly-transductive and Expressive New AAVs (ATHENA) screening stage can productively choose the best AAV vector for every cell type in a high-throughput (HTP) way. Significant difficulties in AAV-based gene therapy are the transduction productivity, conceivable resistance to the capsid and complex assembling measures. The capacity to distinguish appropriate cutting edge AAV vectors that could beat the limits of before generation AAV vectors is basic to a patient for accomplishing adequate helpful articulation of the moved gene in the most minimal portion dose regular strategy, for example, intravitreal (IVT) injection with reasonable cost.
"AAVnerGene's proprietary technology may create capsid libraries derived from artificial intelligence machine learning, DNA shuffling or directed evolution allowing a significant increase in AAV genetic payload capacity, production, and transduction with the ability to penetrate through the inner limiting membrane of the retina, thus potentially enhance the overall transduction efficiency of capsid library-derived AAV vectors," said Alvin Luk, Ph.D., M.B.A., Chief Executive Officer of Neurophth. "Importantly, if proven successful, the administration of the selected AAVnerGene capsid variant(s) in gene therapy may enable repeated dosing AAVs in both adults and pediatric patients, potentially improving the clinical efficacy at a lower vector dose with better penetration of the barriers in eyes using a safer and less invasive procedure such as intravitreal injection which lower the risk of immune response to the capsid."
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KYAN Therapeutics | September 24, 2020
KYAN Therapeutics, Inc. ("KYAN"), a frontier biotech company with a novel drug-dose combination optimizing platform, Optim.AI, has entered into an exclusive license agreement with Georgetown University for novel selective Class II HDAC inhibitors. KYAN has already commenced preclinical development of the lead candidate, which has been designated as KYAN-001, with early positive results. In vitro and in vivo studies of KYAN-001 have shown high efficacy for Multiple Myeloma and Prostate Cancer. The low toxicity and metabolic stability of KYAN-001 indicates a better safety and tolerability profile than FDA approved pan-HDAC inhibitors which suffer from toxicity issues and side effects. KYAN-001 also uniquely inhibits HDAC4 nucleoshuttling to further drive its anti-cancer effects. "We're very excited to proceed with KYAN-001 because of its promising features and we are confident that we can identify optimal combination therapies across multiple cancer indications with Optim.AI," said Lisa Chow, COO and General Counsel of KYAN.
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