I: TechBio News Day 👾
🗂️: 10x Genomics, Elsevier, Insilico Medicine, IPA, J Ints Bio, Model Medicines, Antiverse and inCerebro
Hi everyone, for this week’s update 👉🏼
I: TechBio News Day 👾
🗂️: 10x Genomics, Elsevier, Insilico Medicine, IPA, J Ints Bio, Model Medicines, Antiverse and inCerebro
🗂️: Oxford Cannabinoid Technologies, DiaGen, Noetik, CellCarta, Lunaphore, Tevogen Bio, Nucleai and Synaffix & BigHat Biosciences
🗂️: J INTS BIO, Research Grid, Quantiphi & DDReg, PicnicHealth, Lantern Pharma, Concr & CariGenetics, Voima Ventures, InnophAI and Vilya
“You cannot control anything yet you can affect everything.”
By Maliheh Sadat Razavi
I: TechBio News Day 👾
👾 10x Genomics Inc
10x Genomics, Inc (NASDAQ:TXG) is a leading life-science technology company developing and selling instruments, consumables and software for analyzing gene expression in cells, and consists of three platforms:
the Chromium platform for single cells for single cell sequencing that allows scientists to see the unique gene expression patterns of each cell;
the Visium platform for spatial analysis of tissue sample for whole transcriptome analysis at single cell-scale resolution; and
the recently released Xenium platform for subcellular spatial mapping, to characterize up to 5,000 genes in cells and tissues with ultra precise single cell spatial imaging.
On October 31, 2024, 10x Genomics pointed out on its blog (Getting started with Visium HD data analysis and third-party tools) that Visium HD is a spatial biology discovery tool that generates whole transcriptome data (NGS-based spatial transcriptomics) at single cell scale from FFPE, fresh frozen and fixed frozen human and mouse tissues. Software tools like Space Ranger (now also supported with 10x Genomics Cloud Analysis) and Loupe Browser, available for free with Visium HD, unlock the insights from this unique data modality which combines a histological image with high-resolution spatial RNA sequencing data. Easy integration with a growing ecosystem of R- and Python-based community developed tools that enable cell segmentation, cell type deconvolution and spatial neighborhood analysis, among other capabilities, promises even greater discovery potential.
10x Genomics, since its founding in 2012, grew through acquisitions. In August 2018, the company announced its first acquisition: Epinomics focused on the development of new techniques for epigenetics research. And four months later, 10x Genomics acquired Spatial Transcriptomics, a company working in the field of spatial genomics.
On October 5, 2020, 10x Genomics announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire ReadCoor, Inc, a developer of foundational In Situ technologies based in Boston. The announcement followed 10x Genomics’ acquisition of Stockholm-based CartaNA AB, a developer of In Situ RNA analysis technology, in late August.
The last two acquisitions gave 10x Genomics comprehensive and foundational intellectual property (110 patents and applications that added to an already comprehensive patent portfolio of over 825 issued patents and applications), and key technology advances complementary to the company’s existing Chromium Single Cell and Visium Spatial platforms. Basically with the In Situ acquisitions, 10x Genomics established the foundation for its third technology platform, the Xenium platform.
In particular, ReadCoor was spun out of George Church’s lab at Harvard University and CartaNA came out of work from Mats Nilsson’s SciLife Lab at Stockholm University. In connection with the acquisitions, George Church and Mats Nilsson became scientific advisors to 10x Genomics.
Prof. George Church (among the 100 most influential people in the world in 2027, that through his Harvard Church Lab has co-founded around 50 biotech companies) with 100+ patents and three 10x Genomics products (offering innovative single cell, spatial biology, & in situ tools) is mentoring also CTO-turned-CEO of Aikium, Dr. Eswar I. (ex senior scientist at 10x Genomics).
Aikium (operating out of Bakar Labs, a world-class incubator for life-science startups at UC Berkeley's Bakar BioEnginuity Hub) is a pre-seed protein therapeutics startup incorporating breakthroughs in synthetic biology and DL. Aikium’s platform is called Yotta Display.
Yotta-ML² is a platform that enables Yotta 10²⁴, scale machine learning (ML) on massive libraries (ML) of SeqRs (basically a different approach to target the disordered proteins), with the world’s only trillion-protein mRNA display for large proteins and patented generative AI based on protein language models, and is able to routinely produce nanomolar binders to disordered epitopes from a wide variety of targets, often where antibody and small molecule based approaches have failed.
Aikium’s team also include Dr. Venkatesh Mysore (CTO, Co-founder and Head of AI at Aikium) and Dr. Shankar Shastry, that together with Dr. Eswar I., are responsible for the design of the SeqR proteins for any given target and afterwards do some REAL experimental work and gather some real experimental data.
For more about Aikium:
Finally, the Xenium Analyzer of 10x Genomics (part of the recently released Xenium platform for the subcellular spatial mapping: characterizing up to 5,000 genes in cells and tissues with ultra precise single cell spatial imaging) is powered by NVIDIA (enabled by NVIDIA GPUs), and accelerates time to results by performing on-board analysis and outputting common file formats for use in third-party tools using NVIDIA RAPIDS (Reducing Single-Cell and Spatial Analysis From Hours to Minutes: Human lung samples run on the 10x Genomics Xenium Analyzer and are processed via NVIDIA RAPIDS). RAPIDS™, part of NVIDIA CUDA-X, is an open-source suite of GPU-accelerated data science and AI libraries with APIs that match the most popular open-source data tools. It accelerates performance by orders of magnitude, at scale, across data pipelines.
Co-founders of 10x Genomics are Ben Hindson, Serge Saxonov and Kevin Ness.
👾 Elsevier
On November 5, 2024, Elsevier (the global information analytics and academic publishing company) announced a commitment to support the global not-for-profit organization The Pistoia Alliance, which advocates for greater collaboration in the life sciences, to address common challenges in AI adoption facing the pharmaceutical and research community (Elsevier supports Pistoia Alliance to accelerate AI adoption).
👾 Insilico Medicine Inc
On November 05, 2024, the Hong Kong-based Insilico Medicine has signed a Revolving Loan Facility of up to $100M with HSBC, one of the world's largest banks and financial services institutions (Hong Kong-based Insilico Medicine enters into revolving loan facility of up to $100 M with HSBC). The credit line, provided from HSBC New Economy Fund, will support the expansion of Insilico's proprietary novel drug discovery pipeline and the upgrade of its end-to-end diversified AI platform, Pharma.AI.
For the latest news on Insilico Medicine:
👾 ImmunoPrecise Ltd
On November 5, 2024, ImmunoPrecise Antibodies (IPA) (NASDAQ: IPA) announced the details of its upcoming TECHDAY event on Friday, November 15, 2024, from 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. EST in Cambridge, Massachusetts. This exclusive gathering will highlight IPA’s latest advancements in AI-driven design, biologics innovation, and strategic technological developments (ImmunoPrecise to Host TECHDAY: Cutting-Edge AI and Biologics Innovation).
IPA (1983, Canada) is a Contract Research Organization (CRO) that represents a HUB of biotherapeutic intelligence. They provide highly specialized full-continuum therapeutic antibody discovery, development and out-licensing services (with Talem) and they offer also the advanced omics and complex intelligence technology, LENSᵃⁱ:
🖇️ LENSai™ that stands for Integrated Intelligence Technology powered by HYFTs® (Universal FingerprintsTM)—seamlessly integrates massive data from diverse data sources to enhance LLMs and accelerate antibody discovery—was developed by BioStrand (founded in Belgium in 2019) an independently operating subsidiary of IPA at the intersection of biotech discovery, biotherapeutics and AI. For more about BioStrand:
🖇️ Talem Therapeutics LLC is also a subsidiary of IPA and is focused on the discovery and development of next-generation, human, monoclonal, therapeutic antibodies. For more about Talem’s pipeline:
For more about IPA:
👾 J Ints Bio Ltd
On November 5, 2024, J Ints Bio hosted in South Korea a significant MOU signing ceremony at Baekyangnuri Plaza, Yonsei University, unveiling a groundbreaking AI-driven collaboration to revolutionize cancer treatment. This ambitious alliance unites leading institutions, including Yonsei University College of Medicine’s DAAN Cancer Research Institute, Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT) and KAIST (J INTS BIO Launches AI-Supercomputing Alliance to Transform Cancer Therapy). The collaboration is structured around a comprehensive, four-phase research strategy: meticulous patient sample collection and preparation, AI-driven protein analysis using supercomputers, synthesis of drug candidates informed by AI insights, and rigorous clinical trials for validation.
J INTS BIO is a bioscience company specializing in the development of anticancer drugs and orphan drugs, through the integration of AI and multi-omics. The company is currently conducting a global phase 1/2 clinical trial to evaluate the safety, tolerability, pharmacodynamics and antitumor activity of JIN-A02 in patients with EGFR mutation-positive, advanced non-small cell lung cancer.
JIN-A02, a 4th generation EGFR-TKI, is a substance that selectively binds to C797S, a mutation that causes resistance to 3rd generation EGFR-TKIs (osimertinib, lazertinib), a non-small cell lung cancer treatment, and has proven efficacy in preclinical studies.
👾 Model Medicines Inc
In mid-October 2024, AI drug discovery startup Model Medicines announced that it raised nearly $15M to continue its efforts to find drug compounds that can be used to treat viral illnesses and some forms of cancer (Model Medicines Raises $14.7M).
Model Medicines (2019, US) is leveraging both generative AI-driven models (Autoencoders/AE, Variational Autoencoders/VAE and Generative Adversarial Networks/GAN designed to explore vast chemical space and propose novel molecular structures with desirable pharmacological properties) and zero-shot Mol-GDL ML techniques (CHEMPrint™ and Constellation™) for drug discovery, and so far they have discovered 192 compounds for 26 targets, validated with multiple world class academic and corporate laboratories.
Their platform GALILEO™ combines advanced ML algorithms, physics-based scoring and absolute binding free energy calculations to identify compounds with the highest probability of success. CHEMPrint™ leverages Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship (QSAR) data to predict the binding affinity and activity of compounds against specific protein targets. And Constellation™ learns from the intricate atomic interactions within protein structures derived from X-ray crystallography and Cryo-EM data and can predict novel ligand-protein binding modes and guide the design of compounds that target specific protein sites.
Their latest preclinical candidate is MDL-4101, targeting BRD4 for the treatment of thyroid cancer. On June 5, 2024, Model Medicines Announced Nomination of Preclinical Candidate, MDL-4101, Targeting BRD4 for the Treatment of Thyroid Cancer.
Model Medicines is also known for developing the The AI Pharma Code, namely a new standard for evaluating AI Drug Discovery Companies, a framework for assessing the capabilities and potential of AI drug discovery companies. The code consists of six rules 📐:
New Biology/Target Discovery: explore uncharted regions in the vast landscape of human biology.
New Chemical Entities: design and optimize new molecules that are structurally distinct from existing compounds.
Zero-Shot Hit Rates above 30% at a concentration below 20μM: zero-shot learning refers to the ability of AI models to make accurate predictions on novel targets or chemical spaces without explicit training data.
Tanimoto Scores below 0.5: Tanimoto score is a metric that measures the structural similarity between two molecules. A low Tanimoto score indicates that the AI-generated molecules are structurally novel and diverse, exploring new regions of chemical space.
A Therapeutic Pipeline Agnostic to Biology and Disease: companies should showcase a robust pipeline that spans multiple therapeutic domains, such as oncology, neurology, immunology and infectious diseases
Preclinical Proof of Concept in a Gold Standard Animal Model or Beyond: at a minimum, companies should provide evidence of preclinical proof of concept for at least one of their assets in a gold-standard animal model.
👾 Antiverse Ltd
On November 5, 2024, Nxera Pharma Co. Ltd (TYO: 4565), formerly known as Sosei Group or Sosei Heptares, and Antiverse announced a multi-target partnership and licensing agreement to design antibodies for G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) (Nxera Pharma and Antiverse Enter Collaboration To Design). The collaboration will combine Antiverse’s generative AI antibody design expertise with Nxera’s NxWave™ platform, a powerful tool for GPCR target selection, validation and structural determination. Their first project will be aimed at designing antibodies with agonistic function for a challenging GPCR target.
Headquartered in Cardiff, UK and with offices in Boston, MA, Antiverse is using ML to engineer novel antibodies against difficult targets such as GPCRs and ion channels (AI de novo discovery). After building 100s of stable cell lines for antibody discovery, cell lines that can be switched on (tetracycline-inducible) to begin receptor expression, Antiverse has reached high accuracy with their generative models from the distribution of their experimental data, enabling for effective target-specific library designs. Their next-generation computational antibody design technology for challenging drug targets, including G-protein coupled receptors and ion channels, allows them to move from target identification to functional antibody in just 6 months.
Since its is difficult to discover antibodies against GPCRs receptors because of cells with low receptor count and because of antibody libraries with poor specificity, at Antiverse they have built a discovery platform that develops cells with high receptor counts (1M per cell) and antibody libraries (de-novo target-specific libraries focused on functional epitopes) with high specificity against each target. Subsequently, in their lab they screen the target-specific libraries against cells with high receptor counts to reach a high number of binders and the outputs are then sent for deep sequencing and AI-based clustering.
On October, 11, 2023, Antiverse and GlobalBio INC, an antibody engineering company developing methods to engineer improved and more developable therapeutic antibodies, announced that they will be extending their collaboration to advance immune checkpoint inhibitors in cancer therapy (Antiverse and GlobalBio, Inc. extend collaboration to advance antibody cancer therapeutics).
👾 inCerebro Co Ltd, 인세리브로
On November 5, 2024, inCerebro has officially adopted CDD Vault, an advanced informatics platform from Collaborative Drug Discovery (CDD), marking a significant step for inCerebro as it enhances its capabilities in managing, sharing and analyzing complex research data, from its proprietary inCerebro MIND platform (Modeling with Intelligence for Novel Drugs) (inCerebro Adopts CDD Vault to Enhance its Capabilities in Managing Complex Research Programs).
inCerebro in Seoul, Korea is a pharmaceutical research and development company combining AI with physics-based methods. The company's proprietary MIND platform (MIND-A, MIND-B, MIND-S and MIND-Q) is specifically designed to identify novel small molecule therapeutics for difficult targets like GPCRs and previously intractable protein targets, by combining key technologies such as QM/MM docking, water pharmacophore, automatic globular/membrane MD, AI-driven BAR free energy and Qcharge-VM2 free energy.
The company was founded in 2019 and among its business’ partners you can find Merck, SAJIM, Insilico Medicine, Xtalpi, QIONG, Chemical Computing Group, KD KyungDong Pharm and Quandela. In 2022, SK Chemicals—a unit of South Korea's third-largest conglomerate SK Group—announced a collaboration with inCerebro, to adopt AI and molecular modeling technology to develop drugs with fewer side effects. In 2023, InCerebro recruited CBO Kang Sang-hwan from LG Chem and SK Chemicals. In 2023, Samjin Pharmaceutical and InCerebro joined forces to develop new drugs using AI.
👾 More news 🫴
Cyrus Biotechnology to Present its Protein Engineering Capability, Immunogenicity Risk Mitigation, and Best-in-Class IgG Protease Candidate at Hit ID Summit.