Photo by engin akyurtDuring drug discovery, once a potential drug has been identified (using high-throughput screening campaigns, fragment-based screening, virtual screening, and other approaches), there is an importance of revealing the molecular target and mechanism of action (MoA) for a new drug. Target identification of a new drug and elucidating the MoA is essential early in the drug discovery process and certainly before initiating human clinical trials
The term “target” is used to describe the specific molecular target (protein, RNA molecule, etc) that a drug interacts with in order for a biological response to start. MoA is sometimes used synonymously with “target,” although this term usually refers to cell signaling systems or processes that are impacted by the drug after its interaction with the specific molecular target (namely inhibitors of enzymes, agonists, or antagonists of cell surface receptors and blockers of plasma membrane transporters etc).
So, it’s not a surprise that AI techniques for MOA prediction platforms are being developed right now by different startups in order to facilitate and innovate novel drug discovery. Let’s see now these startups and what they achieved during 2021.
Aiforia (Helsinki Finland, 2013) by analysing images uploaded to their cloud is allowing researchers to detect any visible feature or pattern at scale, including in tissues and cells, in order to understand pathophysiology. Aiforia’s platform brings together AI and high-performance cloud computing, and assists image-based diagnostics by providing efficient and scalable solutions, enabling new discoveries and clinical support with highly accurate and consistent data.
On June 21, 2021, cancer diagnostics firm Epredia announced that it has entered into a distribution agreement for Aiforia's AI based pathology software, in order to distribute Aiforia's portfolio of preclinical and clinical pathology tools globally, with exclusive rights in Japan, Germany, the UK, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Iceland, France, and the US.
Aiforia has raised a total of €21.2M.
Cambridge Cancer Genomics (acquired by Dante Labs on June 23, 2021) (UK, 2016) aims to transform oncology by combining liquid biopsy with genomics and AI to predict disease progression and improve treatment, by using blood tests to guide smarter cancer therapy.
On June 23, 2021, Dante Labs announced that has acquired CCG, for an undisclosed amount and the acquisition will bring together Dante Labs’ CE-IVD-marked Immensa Genomics Interpretation Software, which enables the interpretation of whole-genome sequencing data in a clinical setting, with CCG's artificial intelligence-based OncOS precision oncology software.
CCG has raised a total of $8.5M.
CytoReason (Israel, 2016) turns clinical data into clear biology, to deliver data-driven target discovery and drug development. Using molecular-level disease models they turn clinical data into biology, mapping what the cells, genes and proteins are doing in a disease, tissue and treatment environment. This enables to uncover disease and drug mechanisms of action and turn that biology into clinical edge, by delivering valuable IP in the form of novel targets, indications, combinations and biomarkers.
On 17 June, 2021, CytoReason announced the initiation of a project with Sanofi, which will utilise its cell-centered models and deconvolution techniques to suggest mechanistic insights for each asthma endotype.
DNAnexus (California US, 2009) combines expertise in cloud computing and bioinformatics to create the global network for genomic medicine. By utilising AI they gain insight from large genomic and biomedical datasets, including those shared by a network of organisations.
DNAnexus is proud to power precisionFDA, a community platform for next-generation sequencing assay evaluation and regulatory science exploration. Vertebrate Genomes Project leverages DNAnexus Titan™ to achieve their ambitious goal of generating reference quality genome assemblies of all 66,000 extant vertebrate species. And in collaboration with Microsoft, DNAnexus Portals™ forms the foundation of St. Jude Cloud, providing researchers access to the world’s largest public repository of pediatric cancer genomic data to accelerate data mining, analysis and visualization capabilities.
DNAnexus has raised a total of $272.6M and has a post-money valuation in the range of $500M to $1B as of Jun 9, 2020.
FDNA (Boston US, 2011) enables precision medicine by using AI for next-generation phenotyping. Their technology links genetic traits with phenotypic characteristics such as facial structure. It offers a tool called Face2Gene that facilitates detection of facial dysmorphic features and recognisable patterns of human malformations from a facial photo to present a list of matching syndromes with up-to-date references.
In 2021, FDNA launched online genetic counseling packages in order to improve access to essential genetic counseling services. It provides important services for individuals and families looking to understand more about their genetic health, their potential risks for developing a rare disease, and, in some cases, to understand a confirmed diagnosis of a rare disease as well.
Euretos (The Netherlands, 2012) provides AI-driven contract research services and cloud access to the Euretos AI platform to enable preclinical discovery and clinical validation of targets, biomarkers and indications. They use AI to recognise and connect relevant information (for molecular disease and drug research) from over 275 life sciences databases and millions of publications and patents is harmonised and integrated using machine reading.
On June 17, 2021, Euretos announced that access to its AI platform (integrated data, toolset and workflows) will be available for free to all academic users. "The Euretos AI Platform is currently being used with some of the largest pharma and biotech companies in the world as well as in a number of large public-private partnerships," says Aram Krol, CEO of Euretos.
OccamzRazor (California US, 2015) uses AI to transform all available data about Parkinson's disease into machine-readable graphs (Human Parkinsome). OccamzRazor consumes and analyses unstructured and structured biomedical datasets (e.g., published literature, preclinical and clinical trial results), to construct its knowledge graph used to drive downstream therapeutic insight, augment decision making in biomedical research and generate strategic therapeutics development.
Katharina Volz, founder and CEO of OccamzRazor, appeared on Forbes’ 30 under 30 list in the science category in 2017, and MIT’s Technology Review picked her as one of their 35 Innovators Under 35. Investors in OccamzRazor include Jeff Dean, the head of A.I. at Google, and Justin Rosenstein, the co-founder of Asana (source Inverse).
On July 19, 2021, OccamzRazor joined JLabs, the Johnson & Johnson Innovation Hub in downtown Manhattan. Their New York-based team will have desks on site and the prominent SoHo location will serve as our new physical headquarters.
OccamzRazor has raised a total of $6.3M.
PhenomicAI (Canada, 2017) is using advanced ML tools for processing imaging, RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics data to understand the biology of single-cells sitting in complex multi-cell systems. This allows to explore how cells communicate with each other, both in human tissue samples and disease relevant experimental models.
For example, they can understand how cancer cells hijack fibroblasts, a key cell-type of the tumor stroma, or how hijacked fibroblasts then shut down T-cells that are usually programmed to attack the cancer cells. And in the end, undestand in which drug targets one should invest time and money on.
Phenomic AI has raised a total of $11.4M.
Precisionlife (Oxfordshire UK, 2018) uses AI to find combinations of genomic, phenotypic and clinical features that define disease risk, prognosis and therapy response in a complex disease population. Is a leading combinatorial analytics company driving understanding of disease biology and patient stratification.
On May 17, 2021, PrecisionLife Ltd. and data driven drug discovery Cyclica Inc. announced that they have entered into a strategic partnership to offer their complementary computational platforms as an integrated drug discovery factory, collaborating with pharma and biotech. The two companies have the capacity to advance a large number of innovative AI enhanced drug discovery programs and build an industry pipeline of partnered R&D opportunities.
Precisionlife has acquired Genokey (a biotechnology company that provides deep combinatorial analysis of genomic and other clinical data) on March 24, 2021.
ReviveMed (US, 2016) uses AI to unlock the therapeutic potential of metabolomics. Most existing technologies solely rely on mRNA, excluding metabolomics, because of the ambiguity in using large-scale metabolomics data. The company's technology is based on a network-based ML algorithm for integrative analysis of untargeted metabolomic data with other large-scale molecular information, including data from genes, proteins, drugs and diseases, transforming metabolomic data into actionable insights, enabling development of in-house therapeutics for patients suffering from liver diseases and ailments.
ReviveMed is collaborating with Bristol Myers Squibb to study metabolomics for cancer immunotherapy development and has raised so far a total of $1.7M.
Systems Oncology (US, 2015) equipped with advanced cognitive computing technologies, is able to aggregate and mine disparate types of biomedical datasets to reveal novel contextual vulnerabilities in cancer. Today, Systems Oncology is managing a rapidly growing pipeline of more than 10 innovative cancer therapeutic programs, many of which are being developed collaboratively through partnerships with leading academic partners worldwide. On September 15, 2020, Bayer has entered into an exclusive global license agreement with Systems Oncology, for ERSO, a compound in pre-clinical development for metastatic Estrogen Receptor (ER) positive, breast cancer.
On September 07, 2021, Systems Oncology LLC developing a new class of multi-modal RNA therapeutics (that simultaneously silence the right combination of disease targets with a single RNA molecule), announced that the management team will be presenting and participating at the following upcoming conferences: H.C. Wainwright 23rd Annual Global Investment Conference, Wells Fargo 2021 Virtual Healthcare Conference and TIDES USA Conference.
Structura Biotechnology (Canada, 2016) is building a software that enables fast, accurate and automated electron cryo-microscopy (cryo-EM) for drug discovery and research. Structura Bio's state-of-the-art cryoSPARC platform is used globally for cryo-EM data analysis and 3D reconstruction. CryoSPARC offers specially designed, proprietary algorithms for membrane proteins, ion channels, GPCRs and drug targets with ligands bound.
During the COVID19 emergency, using cryoSPARC (which was spun out of research done by Ali Punjani while he was a PhD student in the department of computer science and was designed by alumnus Suhail Dawood, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and the U.S. National Institutes of Health) the company was able to quickly go from a raw sample to being able to produce an atomic scale map of the spike protein. In particular, one of their novel algorithms, referred to as 3D Variability Analysis, provided insights into the dynamic motions of the coronavirus spike protein that are important for receptor-binding and membrane fusion.
Sensyne Health (UK, 2018) is a healthcare technology company that creates value from accelerating the discovery and development of new medicines and improving patient care through the analysis of real-world evidence from large databases of anonymised patient data.
On September 9, 2021, it was announced that Sensyne Health has come out with a new real-world data AI platform that taps into a dataset of anonymised and de-identified data from 2 million patients through research partnerships with the UK's National Health Service and US health systems. The data set is expected to quintuple to 10 million patients by the end of this year. Sensyne's new platform is meant for clinicians, academic researchers and life science professionals.
Sensyne Health has raised a total of £27.5M in funding over 1 round.
Shivom (recently rebranded as the DNA HLTH.network) (London UK, 2018) is a clinical SaaS solution which helps pharmaceutical companies gain access to genetic data for quick and efficient research, all the while incentivising and protecting data owners and custodians. They want to become the world’s first global omics data sharing and analytics marketplace.
Shivom has raised a total of $300K in funding over 1 round.
ZebiAI (Massachusetts UK, 2019) (acquired by Relay Therapeutics) uses AI to analyse high quality protein-small molecule interaction data from DNA-encoded library (DEL) screens.
Chemome Initiative (Chemistry of the Genome) — a collaboration between Google and ZebiAI — aims to enable the discovery of many more small molecule chemical probes and will work with researchers to identify proteins of interest and source screening data that the team will use to train AI models. These models will make predictions on commercially available libraries of small molecules — chemical probes that aren’t useful as drugs, but that selectively inhibit or promote the function of specific proteins — that will be provided to researchers for activity testing to advance some programs through discovery (source Venture Beat).
On April 16, 2021, it was announced that Relay Therapeutics is acquiring ZebiAI with an $85 million upfront payment. For Relay, the acquisition of ZebiAI will allow the company to accelerate the use of ML across its own Dynamo platform to fast-track the discovery of novel medicines. Dynamo leverages unparalleled insights into protein motion and function to create a new drug discovery paradigm. Relay’s initial focus is on enhancing small molecule therapeutic discovery in targeted oncology and genetic disease.
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