AI-powered drug discovery: update (XII)
Companies with assets in preclinical and clinical trials: 💠 Cyrus, 👾 Aigen, ✴️ Kapoose Creek Bio, ✳️ AI Proteins, 🔷 Somite.AI, 🔶 CancerAppy, ⚜️ Dewpoint and 🌀 Alleo Labs
“People’s beliefs about their abilities have a profound effect on those abilities. Ability is not a fixed property; there is a huge variability in how you perform. People who have a sense of self-efficacy bounce back from failures; they approach things in terms of how to handle them rather than worrying about what can go wrong.”
― Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence
For the previous newsletters of this series of updates specifically on AI drug discovery companies with assets in preclinical and clinical trials 👉
Index for “AI-powered drug discovery: update part XII” 🧵
💠 Cyrus Biotechnology Inc
Cyrus Bio (2014), an AI-driven Seattle-based drug discovery company focused on naturally existing proteins that show the potential to be turned into superior therapeutics using AI and deep mutagenesis, combines laboratory-tested AI and Rosetta (developed at the UW IPD) computational methods with a full biochemistry lab specializing in quantitative, large-scale mutagenesis scanning, state-of-the-art protein engineering and assaying techniques. Their platform is building novel biologics through a focus on re-engineering existing proteins and rapid feedback between modeling and lab testing in vitro and in vivo, and is offering the following capabilities: Structure Prediction, Immunogenicity Reduction, Stability and Serum Half-Life, Solubility & Reducing Aggregation, Affinity and Specificity
Cyrus proprietary methods also permit the Deep Mutagenesis Scanning (DMS) of every possible amino-acid substitution in a protein, using a low noise and highly physiologically relevant approach, and has shown the ability to identify valuable gain of function mutations not identified by other groups.
Regarding DMS, on December 6, 2021 Cyrus announced the closing of a $18M Series B financing and acquisition of Orthogonal Biologics, a deep mutational scanning protein engineering spin-out from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Orthogonal Biologics, and Dr. Procko’s laboratory at UIUC, developed a unique and powerful deep mutational scanning system with capabilities across a range of protein and cell types, to produce accurate and highly human-relevant data for protein engineering.
So far, Cyrus has advanced biologics for IgG mediated autoimmune disease (IdeS enzyme), Infectious Disease (COVID19, CMV), metabolic disorders (IL-22) and oncology (IL-15). In particular, right now they are working on:
💠 CYR212 Next-Gen IdeS for severe autoimmune diseases (such as Immune Thrombocytopenia and warm Autoimmune Hemolytic Anemia driven by pathogenic IgG auto-antibodies)
Cyrus’ IgG protease, derived from the streptococcus bacterium, is able to rapidly deplete these auto-antibodies and to provide rapid, deep and sustained relief from the major symptoms of these diseases.
On January 16, 2024, Cyrus presented preclinical data on its next generation IdeS program for IgG-mediated autoimmune disease and for gene therapy pre-treatment.
The IdeS has been approved in wild type form for use in certain kidney transplantation recipients, where IgG depletion successfully mitigates host immunity against the transplant. However, broader autoimmune disease application of IdeS has been hampered by a relatively short half-life, neutralization by pre-existing anti-IdeS antibodies and a strong anti-IdeS immune response upon repeat dosing.
However, in its latest presentation Cyrus showed that its two preclinical candidates were designed to extend half-life, to reduce reactivity with pre-existing anti-IdeS antibodies in human serum and finally to reduce immunogenic epitopes.
On November 12, 2024, Cyrus presented the company’s capabilities in protein engineering and therapeutics risk mitigation at the inaugural Hit ID Summit in Boston, at the Boston Back Bay Hilton (Cyrus Biotechnology to Present its Protein Engineering Capability, Immunogenicity Risk Mitigation, and Best-in-Class IgG Protease Candidate at Hit ID Summit). The presentation included:
data demonstrating Cyrus’s hybrid AI/screening platform in risk mitigation of protein therapeutics and
Cyrus’ IgG protease candidate verified extended half-life and reduced immunogenicity with demonstrated repeat dosing in vivo.
💠 Next-Gen IL-22 for tissue protection and regeneration, especially for gastrointestinal disorders and viral infections. This cytokine also appears to promote weight loss.
The challenge for most IL-22 therapies in development has been the presence of an IL-22 specific binding protein (IL-22BP) that inhibits therapy. Cyrus’ IL-22 is BP-resistant as well as half-life extended.
💠 Next-Gen IL-15
IL-15 activates effector T-cells (Teff) and Natural Killer (NK) cells, stimulating an immune response to tumors in the body. However, IL-15 can also trigger toxicity, such as neutropenia, at higher doses. Cyrus’ IL-15 has a larger therapeutic window via a proprietary AI-designed slow-release modification.
They are working also on the following projects with partners: ACE2.v2 Receptor Decoy, hCMV Receptor Decoy and IL-6 Pathway Agonist.
On June 11, 2024, Cyrus spinned out a software and services group, Levitate Bio, to bring the Cyrus platform to the larger biopharma industry. This transition aligns with Cyrus’ advancement of its IdeS IgG degrading enzyme for multiple IgG-mediated autoimmune indications, as well as its extended-half-life COVID prophylaxis/therapeutic IND-stage candidate, ACE2v2 and other autoimmune and oncology programs in discovery stage (Cyrus Biotechnology Spins out Levitate Bio, a Protein AI, Bioinformatics, and Rosetta Service Provider, to Bring Automated, Customized AI Solutions to Biopharma Drug Discovery).
Moreover, on September 9, 2021 Selecta Biosciences, Inc. (NASDAQ: SELB), a company leveraging its clinically validated ImmTOR™ platform to develop tolerogenic therapies that selectively mitigate unwanted immune responses, and Cyrus announced a protein engineering collaboration to combine Selecta’s ImmTOR platform with Cyrus’ capabilities to create a proprietary IL-2 protein agonist targeting autoimmune and other deleterious immune conditions (Selecta Biosciences and Cyrus Biotechnology Enter Collaboration to Create Novel Engineered Therapeutic Proteins).
Finally, in 2022 Cyrus co-founded the Openfold consortium with Amazon, NVIDIA, Genentech, Outpace and Arzeda. Lucas Nivon, CEO at Cyrus is a member of the 4-person OpenFold Executive Committee, responsible for choosing new research directions in protein AI.
On August 13, 2024, OpenFold, a leading non-profit AI research consortium focused on developing free and open source software tools for biology and drug discovery, announced the addition of six new industry members: Astex Pharmaceuticals, Biogen, Congruence Therapeutics, Polaris Quantum Biotech, Psivant Therapeutics and SandboxAQ (OpenFold AI Research Consortium Welcomes Six New Members: Astex, Biogen, Congruence, Polaris Quantum, Psivant, and SandboxAQ).
👾 Aigen Sciences Inc, (주)아이젠사이언스
AIGEN Sciences (Seoul, South Korea founded in 2021) is an award-winning AI drug discovery platform that enables the direct discovery of high potency drugs that induce desired cellular-level activity with minimal off-target effects and toxicity, utilizing
AIGEN Discovery: For Hit/Lead Generation,
AIGEN MoA: For Target/ MoA ID and
AIGEN Optimizer: For De Novo Design & Optimization.
Currently they have four candidates (small molecules) in preclinical phase for oncology:
👾 AIG-Onco1/ pan KRAS inhibitor (Pancreatic Cancer, Colon Cancer) (IND planned for 2024),
👾 AIG-Onco2 (Solid Cancer) (IND planned for 2025),
👾 AIG-Onco3 (Solid Cancer) (IND planned for 2025),
👾 AIG-Onco4 (Solid Cancer) (IND planned for 2025),
and two more candidates in development (immune system, oncology) in partnership with:
👾 Lmito Therapeutics (a clinical-stage pharmaceutical company for autoinflammatory/autoimmune disorders and fibrotic diseases, in Yongin-si, South Korea) working on AIG-Immune 1 w/ and
👾 Incurix (a developer of anticancer drugs, in South Korea, designed for targeting tumor transcription factors) working on AIG-Onco5 w/ (lung cancer).
On October 16, 2024, Aigen Sciences (backed by AI technology) raised ₩12 billion (US$ 8.8M) in a series A financing round to further advance its cancer and rare disease drug pipelines (AI drug developer Aigen Sciences raises ₩12B series A).
✴️ Kapoose Creek Bio
Kapoose Creek Bio in Vancouver Canada is using AI technologies to uncover small molecule medicines from nature with unprecedented speed and scale (The Potential Of Fungi In Modern Medicine). They have developed the platform, unEarth Rx, that integrates phenotypic screening with advanced machine and deep learning to accelerate the identification of high-quality drug leads and simultaneously determine their mechanism of action. The result is a comprehensive, data-rich, functional map of nature’s chemistry for accelerated discovery and development of new small molecule medicines.
unEarth Rx has delivered exciting new leads so far, including two proprietary assets undergoing hit-to-lead optimization for use in treating neurodegenerative diseases and depression:
✴️ KCB-100 (neurodegeneration), optimization,
✴️ KCB-200 (depression), optimization.
✴️ KCB-100 and KCB-200 are both derived from Kapoose Creek Bio’s proprietary collection of cultured and preserved fungi, isolated largely from the biodiverse ecosystem of the Kapoose Creek rainforest on Vancouver Island, a unique swath of land untouched during the last ice age. The company recently reached a milestone of more than 5,000 atypical specimens of macrofungi in its collection, representing an extraordinary reservoir of novel and diverse chemical matter for pioneering drug discovery (Kapoose Creek Bio Announces Advancement Of Potent Compounds In Neurology Using AI-Powered Technology).
On October 30, 2024, Kapoose Creek Bio expanded its Canadian presence with the opening of a new office and natural products drug discovery laboratory at McMaster Innovation Park, giving the drug discovery innovator important new roots in the hub of drug discovery in Eastern Canada (Kapoose Creek Bio Expands Canadian Presence With AI-Powered Drug Discovery Lab At McMaster Innovation Park).
Moreover, Kapoose Creek Bio announced on October 30, 2024 an exclusive licensing and asset acquisition agreement with Adapsyn Bioscience (McMaster-affiliated Kapoose Creek Bio acquires Adapsyn tech, talent and drug-discovery lab). As part of the agreement, Kapoose Creek Bio will gain access to Adapsyn’s AI technology and natural products database to advance its drug discovery activities. Both companies already have close connections to McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, since Adapsyn was spun out of McMaster professor Nathan Magarvey’s lab at the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research in 2016, and Kapoose Creek is headed by McMaster professor Eric Brown.
Adapsyn Bioscience (2016, Canada) has a genomics platform that identifies microbial strains that produce novel chemistry and they can predict the chemotype, structure, drug-likeness and even target of the resulting compounds. Its metabolomics platform allows them to identify novel and known compounds produced by microbes, which are automatically isolated for downstream evaluation, without messing around with cloning or cell-free production. Moreover their platform generates novel chemical libraries amenable to broad phenotypic characterization, high content screening and focused biochemical assays. For more about Adapsyn’s pipeline:
✳️ AI Proteins Inc
The US-based startup AI Proteins (2021) provides (with de novo protein design) drug-like miniproteins combining AI and synthetic biology. These miniproteins, also referred to as “constrained peptides” and seen as an ideal next-generational therapeutics modality, offer: specificity (selective binding to target), versatility (high tissue penetration, and ability to precisely control serum half life and in-tissue residency), safety (no harmful breakdown products), modularity (plug-and-play multivalent constructs or chemical conjugation), developability (well behaved in vitro and in vivo), stability, patentability and affordability.
AI Proteins’ platform engineers miniproteins and makes it ready for preclinical development in 3 to 12 weeks and so far AI Protein has a large portfolio of over a hundred different assets in just over two years. Each novel peptide they produce: folds into a highly stable structure, is comprised of canonical amino acids and without post-translational modifications, is not immunogenic, is negatively charged to reduce off-target tissue binding, can be synthesized chemically or through fermentation, its low molecular weight leads to improved tissue penetration and low immunogenicity, has multivalent constructs via genetic fusion to the termini, its protein surface confers high solubility, no deamidation and resists oxidation and finally it has optional disulfide bonds.
AI Proteins has several advanced preclinical projects in development (among the validated hits against >100 targets):
✳️ 3x Internal Programs, Oncology, Immune cell engagers all in preclinical efficacy:
✳️ CD16A (CD16a antagonists, Low affinity immunoglobulin gamma Fc region receptor III-A antagonists),
✳️ LILRB4 (LILRB4 inhibitors, Leukocyte immunoglobulin-like receptor subfamily B member 4 inhibitors),
✳️ other.
✳️ 1x Partnership Program, Oncology, Confidential
✳️ Partnership Programs, Inflammation:
✳️ TNFR1 (TNFR1 inhibitors, Tumor necrosis factor receptor superfamily member 1A inhibitors), Preclinical Efficiency,
On January 18, 2024, Vivtex and AI Proteins Entered Strategic R&D Collaboration to Develop Novel, Oral Biologic Therapies for Inflammatory Diseases. The partners will leverage Vivtex’s proprietary and extensively validated GI-ORIS™ (“Gut on a chip” and AI) screening and formulation platform technology to evaluate and enhance the oral bioavailability of AI Proteins’ miniproteins designed to target and inhibit the activity of the TNF receptor 1 (TNFR1).
✳️ Confidential, Optimized Lead, Partner 2,
✳️ Confidential, Optimized Lead, Partner 3,
✳️ Partnership Programs, Metabolic:
✳️ GLP-1R, Preclinical Efficacy,
✳️ Multi-Receptor agonist/antagonist, Optimized Lead.
On June 5, 2024, AI Proteins Strengthened its Leadership Team with the Addition of Biopharmaceutical Industry Veteran Michael D. Krepps as Head of Corporate Strategy. Mr. Krepps brings a breadth of capabilities across the biotech spectrum, with experience as a scientist, founder, company builder, management consultant, and venture capitalist. On November 6, 2024, AI Proteins announced that it has been selected as one of the 25 winners of the prestigious Falling Walls Venture Science Start-up competition (AI Proteins Selected as a Winner of the Falling Walls Venture Science Start-up Competition).
Finally just this week (December 03, 2024), AI Proteins announced a Research Collaboration and Option Agreement with Bristol Myers Squibb (NYSE: BMY) to discover and develop novel miniprotein-based therapeutics utilizing AI Proteins’ powerful discovery platform (AI Proteins Announces Research Collaboration and Option Agreement with Bristol Myers Squibb for Miniprotein-Based Therapeutics Valued up to $400M).
🔷 Somite AI Therapeutics
The US-based venture-backed startup Somite AI Therapeutics (2023) provides an AI-driven cell therapy that improves the generation of new cell types by developing a digital twin of the embryo development (and in vitro differentiation) to identify protocols for generating new cell types and carry out rapid optimization cycles. Its platform, AlphaStem, fuels a virtuous cycle since it enables new cell therapies, generating massive data that further improve the platform. In this way, Somite.AI is aiming to become the OpenAI of stem cell biology, developing AI foundation models to produce human tissue for cell therapies at scale for diseases such as diabetes, obesity and muscular dystrophies.
In particular, the cells of the musculoskeletal system that derive from transient embryonic structures are called somites and Somite.AI is the only company proficient in producing these somite-derived cells efficiently, mainly including muscle, brown adipose, cartilage, bone, tendon and dermis.
Subsequently, their digital twin constructed from data-rich sources (scRNA-Seq, scATAC-seq, gene expression databases, etc.) allows them to leverage AI to rapidly identify novel protocols for generating the new cell types, discover new regulators of cell differentiation and carry out rapid protocol optimization cycles.
A good example comes from human satellite and brown adipose cells, where applying computation analysis and AI allowed them to identify signatures of ligand-mediated signaling with different pathways from those used in an established protocol and the resulting optimized protocol (using these predictions) helped them increase purity of the cultures from 25% to over 50% without requiring cell sorting procedures.
The conditions that involve a loss of somite-derived cell populations, that could all be treated by cell replacement therapy using somite-derived cells, are: Metabolic diseases (e.g. Diabetes, Obesity, MAFLD - including NASH) with Brown adipocytes, Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), incontinence and muscle injuries using Satellite cells, Joints and cartilage injuries using Tendons and chondrocytes, Connective tissue syndromes (e.g. Hypermobility, EDS) using Connective tissue and Severe burns using Dermis.
The company's pipeline includes two promising cell therapy programs:
🔷 SMT-M01 program for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD)
On September 16, 2024, Somite.AI announced that the FDA has granted both Orphan Drug Designation (ODD) and Rare Pediatric Disease Designation (RPDD) for SMT-M01, for the treatment of DMD (Somite Therapeutics Announces FDA Orphan Drug and Rare Pediatric Disease Designations for SMT-M01 in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy).
On September 09, 2024, Somite.AI and OmniaBio Inc, a contract development and manufacturing organization (CDMO) conducting process development and producing gene-modified cells and viral vectors for Phase I clinical trials to commercial-scale manufacturing, announced a cell therapy development and manufacturing collaboration for producing SMT-M01, Somite's flagship program for DMD (Somite Therapeutics and OmniaBio Inc. Announce Collaboration to Advance Somite's Cell Therapy Flagship Program).
🔷 SMT-B01 program for metabolic disorders.
Finally, on September 3, 2024 Somite Therapeutics announced a $4.8M extension of its pre-seed round, only 6 months after the initial raise, bringing total funds raised to over $10M, with Astellas Venture Management and Montage Ventures Joining as Board Observers (Somite Therapeutics Announces Round Extension with Astellas Venture Management and Montage Ventures Joining as Board Observers). The additional funding will be used to expedite data generation to train Somite's AI platform, AlphaStem, advance SMT-M01 toward the clinic, start a second clinical program, SMT-B01, using brown adipocytes to treat metabolic disorders and begin research with hypoimmune cell lines.
🔶 CancerAppy S.L.
The Spanish startup CancerAppy (2019, based in Bilbao) develops an AI-driven platform to accelerate oncological targets and drug discovery (small molecules, antibodies, ADC) by analyzing extensive databases that contain 1 billion compounds as drug candidates. ML algorithms integrated into their platform perform lead optimization calculations based on factors like biological activity, target specificity and ADMET properties, from Target ID & Validation to the Preclinical Phase.
The rapid growth of their internal pipeline demonstrates the great drug discovery capabilities driven by the use of their AI platform. Their most advanced programs in preclinical phase are:
🔶 CA123AST0104, ADC, Pancreatic cancer (CA04 first-in-class monoclonal antibody),
🔶 CA1913CTST01P1, Small molecule, Multiple Solid Cancer,
🔶 CA1913CCTST01T9a, Small molecule, Multiple Solid Cancer,
🔶 CA1913CTST0105c, Small molecule, Multiple Solid Cancer (CA05 first-in-class kinase inhibitor, which is a protein kinase overexpressed in various types of tumors with a clear oncogenic role and no type-specific inhibitor),
🔶 CA1619CTST0107a (CA07 a, b, c), PROTAC, Multiple Solid Cancer (In 2023, Cancerappy, together with UCLM, have been awarded the grant from the CCP21 program for the development of nanomedicines, nanoPROTACs, with a total budget of €757,000 and a project duration of 3 years).
During 2024, CancerAppy Contributed to Innovative Scientific Paper on ADCs in Clinical Use (extensive analysis of the physicochemical properties of Antibody-Drug Conjugates (ADCs) payloads, yielding crucial insights pivotal for the strategic design and advancement of ADC therapies), a CancerAppy delegation has participated in a roadshow of European companies to learn about the innovative health ecosystem in the Shanghai and Wuxi area and Luis Martin, the Chief Executive Officer of CancerAppy, presented at the ACCESS CHINA Partnering Forum (the largest corporate access event between Asia and the western biopharma industry)–Autumn Virtual Showcase during September 24th to 25th, and 27th, 2024.
Finally, CancerAppy was named as one of the Top Ten Drug Discovery and Development solutions providers in Europe for 2023.
⚜️ Dewpoint Therapeutics Inc
Dewpoint Therapeutics is the first company to apply the emerging understanding of biomolecular condensates to drug discovery, by developing drugs for the vast range of conditions that are regulated by condensates or arise from the dysfunction of condensates. Condensates are the membrane less organelles formed by a process called phase separation. The condensates form and dissolve dynamically and this behaviour is formed and governed by multivalent interactions between proteins and nucleic acids. Their role is to compartmentalize and concentrate molecules enabling key biomolecular processes. Condensate modifying drugs (c-mods) are uniquely designed to hit condensates drugs when something goes wrong (condensatopathies).
Dewpoint’s integrated platform consists of 1) Ↄ•Target: using human genetics to identify novel condensate targets, 2) Ↄ•Tech: characterizing the condensate and validating the disease, 3) Ↄ•Discover: identifying, optimizing and advancing C•Mods to the clinic (screening and chemistry) and 4) ERSAI: a digital platform exploring and codifying relationships between condensates, human disease and chemistry to accelerate discovery of next generation medicine.
Dewpoint currently has multiple programs across an ambitious pipeline spanning oncology, neurodegeneration, cardiopulmonary and virology indications, and collaborations with leading global academic and pharmaceutical partners, including Evotec, Novo Nordisk, Bayer and Chemify:
⚜️ Oncology
⚜️ IND 2H 2025, Beta catenin (colorectal cancer), Preclinical,
⚜️ On October 28, 2024, Dewpoint Therapeutics announced the nomination of its first development candidate, DPTX3186, an orally administered small molecule condensate modulator (c-mod) inhibiting the oncogenic function of beta catenin, as a potential therapeutic agent for the treatment of Wnt-driven cancers. The development candidate was discovered using Dewpoint's fully automated, AI/ML-enabled state-of-the-art platform and proprietary chemical library (Dewpoint Therapeutics Announces Nomination of First C-Mod Development Candidate DPTX3186 for Treatment of Wnt-Driven Cancers). IND anticipated in mid-2025 followed by Phase 1 initiation in 2H 2025.
⚜️ IND 2H 2026, MYC (solid tumors), Lead Op,
⚜️ Neurodegenerative
⚜️ TDP-43 (ALS), Preclinical,
On August 26, 2024, Dewpoint Therapeutics Awarded Target ALS Grant for the Second Time for Development of c-mods for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS).
⚜️ Cardiovascular
⚜️ On October 24, 2024, Bayer (ETR: BAYN) entered into an exclusive licensing agreement with Dewpoint Therapeutics for a heart disease program to treat dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) patients.
⚜️ Diabetes
⚜️ On March 22, 2023, Dewpoint Therapeutics announced a research and development partnership with Novo Nordisk (CPH: NOVO-B) to identify drug candidates using Dewpoint’s discovery platform related to biomolecular condensates to treat insulin resistance and diabetic complications. The partnership brings together Novo Nordisk’s global leadership in treating diabetes and metabolic diseases with Dewpoint’s groundbreaking discovery and AI technology platform to identify modulators of biomolecular condensates.
⚜️ On November 7, 2023, Evotec SE (Frankfurt Stock Exchange: EVT, MDAX/TecDAX, ISIN: DE0005664809; NASDAQ: EVO) and Dewpoint Therapeutics announced a strategic R&D collaboration to advance Dewpoint’s leading oncology pipeline programs of condensate modifying therapeutics (“c-mods”) to Investigational New Drug Applications (INDs) using Evotec’s industry-leading fully integrated data-driven platform, INDiGO. The partnership brings together Dewpoint’s advanced oncology pipeline programs with Evotec’s leading capabilities to de-risk and accelerate pre-clinical development candidates to first-in-human clinical studies.
⚜️ On September 13, 2023, Dewpoint Therapeutics announced a collaboration with Chemify to expedite the discovery of molecules that target cancer and neurodegeneration. Chemify spun out of 15 years of research at the University of Glasgow UK is a new company that aims to digitize chemistry and produce solutions to run chemical code for drug discovery, chemical synthesis and materials discovery. They have an extendable chemical execution architecture for chemical synthesis that can automatically read the literature, leading to a universal autonomous workflow. The robotic synthesis code can be corrected in natural language without any programming knowledge, and is hardware independent. This chemical code can then be combined with a graph describing the hardware modules and compiled into platform-specific, low-level robotic instructions for execution (A universal system for digitization and automatic execution of the chemical synthesis literature).
Finally, on January 16, 2024 Dewpoint Therapeutics cuts 15% of staff, acknowledges Merck, Pfizer broke off partnerships over buzzy science.
🌀 Alleo Labs Corporation
Alleo Labs Corp (2023) is utilizing AI to develop new therapeutics for neurological diseases (for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease) by merging large-scale computing and drug discovery. With support from the NVIDIA Inception Program, Alleo is developing a ML software to systematically program small-molecules and optimize the development of safer, more effective treatments for neurodegeneration.
Jermaine Ross, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Alleo, is a former distinguished neuroscientist from the National Institutes of Health and former VP and Head of Neuroscience at Immuneering Corporation (NASDAQ:IMRX), a public biotech company focusing on the treatment for oncology and neurological diseases. On June 25, 2020, Immuneering’s neuroscience division, known as Alleo Labs, announced a collaboration with Astex Pharmaceuticals (UK), a wholly owned subsidiary of Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd, to identify novel therapeutic targets for an undisclosed neurodegenerative disease. On September 12, 2024, Immuneering Announced Positive Initial Phase 2a Data Including Complete and Partial Responses with IMM-1-104 in Combination with Chemotherapy in First-Line Pancreatic Cancer Patients.
Alleo’s lead program ALO-001 is a potential first-in-class DUB enzyme inhibitor for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. 🌀 ALO-001 is an orally administered brain penetrant small molecule being developed for the treatment of neuroinflammation, currently in preclinical development. On January 8th 2024, Perceiv AI, a leader in AI-driven precision medicine developing a multimodal prognostic platform for intelligent patient selection (selected by Merck in 2023 for the inaugural Merck Digital Sciences Studio), announced a strategic partnership with Alleo Labs to de-risk and support the next clinical trial of Alleo, by utilizing Perceiv AI’s multimodal ForesightTM platform and prognostic biomarkers to select the most optimal patients for Alleo's upcoming clinical trials of ALO-001.
Alleo Labs and Ubiquigent have also teamed up (October 15, 2024) to accelerate drug discovery using AI, focusing on deubiquitinase (DUB) for neurological disorders (Alleo and Ubiquigent enter AI-driven strategic partnership to accelerate DUB-focused drug discovery). The partnership will combine Alleo’s AI-based approach (RubDUB) to develop novel therapeutics with Ubiquigent’s platform and expertise in the field of DUB focused drug discovery. Ubiquigent Limited is a drug discovery and development company harnessing novel DUB modulators as new therapeutics for areas of high unmet medical need.