Integrated Biosciences Inc., an early-stage startup that is combining synthetic biology and machine learning in the hunt for drugs that tackle cell senescence, has demonstrated its capabilities in a newly published study in Nature Aging on May 4, 2023, which employed artificial intelligence to identify three novel compounds that are highly selective for Bcl-2 and that exhibit favorable medicinal chemistry profiles.
Integrated Biosciences Inc., an early-stage startup that is combining synthetic biology and machine learning in the hunt for drugs that tackle cell senescence, has demonstrated its capabilities in a newly published study in Nature Aging on May 4, 2023, which employed artificial intelligence (AI) to identify three novel compounds that are highly selective for Bcl-2 and that exhibit favorable medicinal chemistry profiles.
The artificial intelligence-first approach to drug discovery may be boosting productivity but has also exposed the fact that in silico design can only go so far. At some point it will be necessary to revert to the conventional method and synthesize a protein and do an experiment. Now newco Adaptyv Bio aims to smooth this transition by applying cell-free systems and micro fluidics to enable proteins to be synthesized and validated at nano scale.
In an age of overwhelming volumes of data that don’t fall together effortlessly into a lucid representation of reality, computational power is often the vital ingredient in leveraging existing data to push the frontiers of medicine. The Cleveland Clinic and IBM unveiled a quantum computing center that provides the sheer computational power needed to sort through the avalanche of data at a pace that will provide real insights into drug development and disease prediction, a development that portends truly revolutionary advances in disease prevention and treatment.
For Aqemia SA, the year got off to a good start, as one of its pharma partners, Les Laboratoires Servier SAS, extended an existing collaboration to drug a supposedly undruggable immuno-oncology target, using its Launchpad artificial intelligence platform.
Nucleome Therapeutics Ltd. is poised to shed some light on the dark matter of the genome after raising £37.5 million (US$42.3 million) in an oversubscribed series A to begin commercialization of its technology for deciphering non-coding genes.
Odyssey Therapeutics Inc. closed a hefty $168 million series B round to progress multiple small-molecule and protein-based drug discovery and development programs in autoimmune disease and cancer.
It is now possible to look up the 3D structure of every known protein following the latest release of Alphafold, an open database run in partnership by Deepmind, the London-based artificial intelligence company owned by Google parent Alphabet and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute in Cambridge, U.K.
AI-enabled drug discovery company Insilico Medicine Ltd. has raised $60 million in a series D round to support expansion of its pipeline. The Hong Kong and New York-based company will use the proceeds to support clinical testing of its lead asset, a potential treatment for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), as well as the advancement of its Pharma.AI platform.
