AI-driven pharmatech company Exscientia announced today that it has commenced an oncology drug discovery and development collaboration with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center to identify novel anti-cancer, cell-intrinsic small-molecule compounds based on jointly identified therapeutic targets.
The researchers at MD Anderson’s Therapeutics Discovery division will use Exscientia’s expertise in building machine learning models to help identify druggable targets and in what it terms a “data-agnostic” approach to drug design. As noted on the company’s website “Through a combination of AI design, predictive models and experiment, our systems quickly explore and learn which areas of chemistry are most likely to balance the complex requirements for each drug discovery project.
“Once promising areas are identified, the systems focus on designs that exploit those areas in order to identify the best compounds.”
As potential therapies are identified in this partnership, the two parties may advance these compounds into proof-of-concept clinical trials at MD Anderson.
“We are driven to develop the next generation of oncology treatments that can offer meaningful benefits and improve the lives of our patients,” said Philip Jones, PhD, vice president of Therapeutics Discovery and head of the Institute for Applied Cancer Science (IACS) at MD Anderson. “This collaboration is built upon Exscientia’s AI-driven precision medicine platform, the strength of MD Anderson’s drug discovery and development engine, and the expertise of our clinical research teams. Our ultimate goal is to decrease the time we spend in drug development and accelerate novel targeted therapies into the clinic.”
AT MD Anderson, IACS is focused on the discovery of small-molecules, which is also the focus of Exscientia’s target identification, discovery, and development efforts. Oxford, England-based Exscientia was founded in 2012 with a focus of working at the interface of advanced AI and drug discovery. It touts itself as the first company to automate drug design and is also the first company develop an AI-designed molecule that entered clinical trials.
The company currently has two candidates in Phase I clinical trials. One is an A2a receptor antagonist for adult patients with advanced solid tumors, which was co-invented and developed through a joint venture with Evotec. The second, is DSP-0038, a small molecule developed via partnership with Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma for the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease psychosis. The company has four other candidates in IND-enabling studies for indications in oncology, inflammation and immunity, and psychiatry and is engaged a number of academic and pharma research activities, including a multi-target collaboration with Bristol-Myers Squibb.
Commenting on the new MD Anderson collaboration, Prof. Andrew Hopkins, DPhil, founder and CEO of Exscientia said: “We are tremendously proud to work alongside MD Anderson to harness our AI-driven platform toward the discovery of next-generation cancer treatments. Artificial intelligence has opened up new possibilities in cancer research, enabling us to use deep learning multi-omics within our precision medicine platform to test potential drug candidates in Exscientia’s patient tissue models. Further, our platform holds the potential to stratify patients even in the early discovery stage, allowing us to efficiently design drug candidates that are most likely to be impactful for people with cancer.”
