Latest news on: 🏮 Owkin & Proscia, Insilico Medicine, Healx, BPGbio, Apeiron, Lantern, Enveda and many more
“Don’t waste your time in anger, regrets, worries, and grudges. Life is too short to be unhappy.”
Roy T. Bennett
💠 Owkin Inc and Proscia Inc
Owkin and Proscia just announced (November 19, 2024) a strategic partnership to streamline MSI testing (Microsatellite Instability Biomarker testing that indicates the stability of the DNA in a tumor) for patients with colorectal cancer (CRC), the second most deadly cancer worldwide. In particular, the two companies will integrate Owkin’s MSIntuit CRC v2 with Proscia’s Concentriq software platform for studying its impact, and make it available as part of Proscia’s precision medicine AI portfolio to enable laboratories to keep pace with demand for MSI screening (Owkin and Proscia Expand Access to AI Pre-Screening for Colorectal Cancer Patients).
Back on October 24, 2024, Bioptimus SAS (launched by Owkin on February 20, 2024) also announced that its H-optimus-0 foundation model is now integrated into Proscia’s Concentriq Embeddings, enabling data scientists and researchers in pathology and life sciences to achieve breakthroughs in AI development (Bioptimus and Proscia to accelerate AI innovation in drug development). H-optimus-0 is an AI foundation model tailored specifically for pathology, delivering high performance in critical tasks advancing model development for AI-driven research, drug development and diagnostics. Trained on a vast dataset of over 500,000 pathology slides, H-optimus-0 has been exposed to a diverse array of cases, enabling it to generalize effectively across different scenarios.
Moreover on June 25, 2024, Proscia (global leader in AI-enabled pathology solutions for precision medicine) also partnered with Nucleai (the AI-powered image analysis company from Israel), in order to integrate Nucleai’s predictive biomarker solutions into Proscia’s Concentriq software platform and make them available as part of Proscia’s precision medicine AI portfolio to better inform patient care.
💠 Insilico Medicine Inc
Insilico Medicine just announced promising results from a Phase IIa trial of its AI-designed drug ISM001-055 for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). The trial across multiple sites in China demonstrated significant improvements in lung function and the drug showed dose-dependent efficacy and was well-tolerated across all dosing regimens (Insilico Medicine Reports Breakthrough Phase IIa Results for AI-Driven IPF Drug ISM001-055).
On September 11, 2024, Insilico Medicine nominated WRN small molecule pre-clinical candidate for MSI-H cancers, targeting synthetic lethality. WRN was identified as a synthetic lethal target in microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H) cancer cells, holding treatment potential for MSI-H patients not responding to available therapies. On September 13, 2024, Insilico announced that has achieved a groundbreaking collaboration with Inimmune, which will utilize Chemistry42, Insilico’s proprietary generative AI technology to accelerate the discovery and development of next-generation immunotherapeutics (Insilico Medicine and Inimmune Achieved collaboration to Revolutionize Immunotherapy with AI-Driven Drug Discovery).
Finally on October 30, 2024, Insilico Medicine announced a milestone achieved in the multi-year research collaboration with Sanofi SA (EPA: SAN). Following the agreement in November 2022, the collaboration just yielded an AI-facilitated lead with first-in-class potential against a challenging undruggable transcription factor target for treating oncology diseases, enhanced by Insilico Medicine’s AI platform Pharma.AI (Insilico Medicine achieves a milestone in AI-facilitated drug discovery collaboration with Sanofi). This target is typically inaccessible through conventional drug development methods.
💠 Healx Ltd
Apart Insilico Medicine, also Healx has a collaboration with Sanofi, which was just announced, (Healx announces agreement with Sanofi to seek new rare disease indications for compound using AI drug discovery platform) in order to identify new disease indications using Healnet, Healx’s AI-driven drug discovery platform.
Healx has several collaborations (with Ono Pharmaceutical Co Ltd/TYO: 4528, Ovid Therapeutics Inc/NASDAQ: OVID) and ongoing projects such as:
🎃 Healx has initiated a Phase 2a clinical trial for HLX-0201, and
🎃 has signed an investment agreement with its long-term partner, Children’s Tumor Foundation (CTF), to support the advance of Healx’s AI-powered neurofibromatosis programme including its lead candidate, HLX-1502, which will enter a Phase 2 clinical trial in the coming months.
For more about Healx’s collaborations and pipeline news:
💠 BPGbio Inc
BPGbio Inc was just named "BioTech AI Company of the Year" in the fourth annual BioTech Breakthrough Awards program and was recognized this year for its breakthrough causal AI approach to drug discovery and development, leveraging its powerful NAi Interrogative Biology® Platform (BPGbio Recognized as 2024 'BioTech AI Company of the Year' by BioTech Breakthrough Awards).
The NAi Interrogative platform consists of an industry leading and clinically annotated proprietary biobank, with purpose-built causal AI and is using the world’s fastest supercomputer, Frontier, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), making it a pioneer in fully-integrated high performance computing platform in the biopharmaceutical industry for AI-driven target nomination, development and molecule design.
BPGbio’s Interrogative Biology® platform has already advanced a robust pipeline of late-stage drug candidates and R&D assets in oncology, neurology and rare diseases, such as:
Mitochondrial Medicine
▶️ BPM31510-IV (acts by targeting the mitochondrial machinery and tumor microenvironment, TME, to create a metabolic shift in cancer cells) for
1️⃣ Glioblastoma, Radiation Sensitizer, Phase 2
On September 12, 2024, BPGbio presented two posters on the ongoing Phase 2 trial (NCT04752813) of its lead candidate, BPM31510, in patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) at the European Society for Medical Oncology Congress 2024 (BPGbio Presents Phase 2b BPM31510 Glioblastoma Trial-in-Progress Update and Pioneering Comprehensive Quinomics Assessment at the ESMO Congress 2024). The preliminary results from the ongoing clinical trial supported their biology-first, AI-driven approach, optimizing patient selection and streamlining drug development.
2️⃣ Pancreatic Cancer, Chemotherapy Sensitizer, Phase 2
3️⃣ Primary Q10 Deficiency, Direct Replacement, Phase 2
BPM31510, is currently in active Phase 2 trials in aggressive cancers, and BPGbio is exploring Phase 3 trials for Primary CoQ10 Deficiency and Primary Mitochondrial Disease (European Bioenergetics Conference (EBEC) 2024 that took place August 26-31, 2024, in Innsbruck, Austria).
On October 1, 2024, PGbio received a Rare Pediatric Disease Designation from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for BPM31510IV to treat primary coenzyme Q10 deficiency, an ultra-rare mitochondrial disorder.
▶️ BPM31510-Oral
Sarcopenia, Mitochondrial Respiration, Phase 2
The Phase 2 BPGbio’s BPM31510 sarcopenia trial will recruit 40 patients between the ages of 65-90 for this study. Patients will be treated for 28 days and subsequently analyzed for physical and metabolic fitness.
Protein Homeostasis
Targeted Protein Degradation, Preclinical (IND enabled)
▶️ Oncology, E2-based TPD (Discovery). On October 7, 2024, BPGbio and the University of Oxford’s Centre for Medicines Discovery announced a five-year research collaboration focused on advancing novel protein degradation technologies, particularly in oncology and central nervous system (CNS) diseases (for example Parkinson’s), with the goal of unlocking new therapeutic pathways.
Apart the drug candidates the company’s diagnostic pipeline includes:
A prostate diagnostic test pstateDx,
And tests being developed and validated for the detection of: Parkinson’s disease, ParkinsonDx, Pancreatic cancer, PancDx, Breast cancer and Liver disease.
If you want to read more about BPGbio’s pipeline
💠 GT Apeiron Therapeutics LLC
Apeiron announced on November 19, 2024 the enrollment of the first patient in its Phase 1a/b study to evaluate GTA182 for advanced solid tumors with MTAP (Methylthioadenosine phosphorylase) deletions. The trial is designed to evaluate the safety, efficacy, and pharmacokinetics of GTA182 across multiple ascending doses, as a monotherapy and in combination with standard of care therapy, in adults with advanced MTAP null solid tumors: Apeiron Enrolls First Patient in Phase 1a/b Study of PRMT5 Inhibitor GTA182 for MTAP-Deleted Solid Tumors. GT Apeiron is redefining medical discovery, using AI to streamline the drug development process—from target selection to clinical trials.
💠 Lantern Pharma Inc
Lantern Pharma Inc. (NASDAQ: LTRN) just announced that the first patient, for its Phase 2 HARMONIC™ clinical trial, has been dosed in Japan 🍜 (as part of the expansion cohort), evaluating LP-300 in never-smoker patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who have progressed after receiving treatment with tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) (Lantern Pharma Announces First Patient Dosed in Japan for The Expansion Cohort in The Phase 2 HARMONIC™ Clinical Trial of LP-300 in Never-Smoker NSCLC Patients).
🏮 The LP-300, Harmonic™ Clinical Trial is a Phase 2 for LP-300, in combination with carboplatin and pemetrexed in never smoker patients with relapsed advanced primary adenocarcinoma of the lung after treatment with tyrosine kinase inhibitors.
LP-300 is a dithio-containing drug candidate that interferes with the activity of cancer promoting proteins by modifying cysteine residues and creating adducts and is intended to work together with chemotherapy to strongly interact with cancer-promoting proteins including TRX/GRX and tyrosine kinases.
LP-300 was advanced with the use of AI by Lantern Pharma after they acquired the rights from BioNumerik Pharmaceuticals, Inc and paid (back in 2018) $25,000 upfront, plus royalty commitments (Lantern files for IPO to study 5-time phase 3 cancer failure).
On April 22, 2024, Lantern Received Regulatory Approval to Expand Harmonic™ Clinical Trial into Japan 🗾 and Taiwan.
Lantern has a very active oncology pipeline with lead programs (LP-300, LP-284, LP-184, ADC), with collaborations (Elraglusib/Actuate Therapeutics, TTC-352/TTC Oncology, XCE853/Oregon Therapeutics, ADC/Bielefeld University) and the subsidiary of Lantern Pharma Starlight Therapeutics focused on CNS & Brain Cancers (STAR-001). Let’s take a look:
🏮 Lantern ’s Investigational Drug-Candidate, LP-184 (or STAR-001), just received Fast-Track Designation in Glioblastoma from the FDA.
A Phase 1b/2a clinical trial for recurrent GBM is targeted to start in late 2024/early 2025. LP-184, which will be developed as STAR-001 for CNS and other neuro-oncology indications by Starlight Therapeutics (a wholly owned subsidiary of Lantern Pharma) has the potential to be the first new drug for treating GBM in more than 20 years (Lantern Pharma’s Investigational Drug-Candidate, LP-184, Receives Fast-Track Designation in Glioblastoma from the FDA).
🏮 On February 15, 2024, Lantern announced an important milestone in its antibody-drug conjugate (ADC) program. In collaboration with Bielefeld University, Lantern has generated a new class of highly specific and highly potent ADCs with a cryptophycin drug-payload (Lantern Pharma Advances Unique ADC (Antibody Drug Conjugate) Program Across Multiple Solid Tumor Cancers).
🏮 On March 15, 2024, Lantern announced the dosing of the first two patients in the Phase 1 clinical trial evaluating Lantern’s investigational new drug LP-284 (a potent DNA alkylating agent that kills solid tumors) in patients with relapsed or refractory non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and other high-grade B-cell lymphomas as well as other selected solid tumors and sarcomas. On June 12, 2024, Lantern announced that the Japan Patent Office has issued a Certificate of Patent for patent application no. 2021-513267 / registration no. 7489966 directed to Lantern Pharma’s drug candidate LP-284 ((+)N-hydroxy-N-(methylacylfulvene)urea).
🏮 On May 6, 2024, Lantern Pharma has entered into a partnership with Oregon Therapeutics for optimizing the development of the cancer drug candidate, XCE853 through an AI-driven approach. XCE853 is a novel protein disulfide isomerase (PDI) inhibitor.
🏮 On September 23, 2024, Lantern Pharma was granted the rare pediatric disease designation (RPDD) for drug-candidate, LP-184, in three cancer indications: Malignant Rhabdoid Tumors, Rhabdomyosarcoma and Hepatoblastoma. This brings the total number of RPDDs for LP-184 to 4, including one previously granted for ATRT (Atypical Teratoid Rhabdoid Tumors).
💠 Enveda Biosciences Inc
Enveda Biosciences announced on November 21, 2024 that it has raised $130M in new funding to deliver clinical catalysts across multiple programs with strong commercial opportunities (Enveda Biosciences raises $130M to advance AI-driven drug discovery from natural compounds).
Enveda Bioscience is focused on identifying new therapeutics derived from the natural world, beginning with the plant kingdom, and has built an advanced “search engine” using metabolomics and advanced ML to catalog and map new drugs that can be derived from the plant kingdom. By using ML, metabolomics and robotics their platform indexes nature’s untapped chemical space for new drug discovery, since over 95% of the natural world is a chemical mystery.
Here is the list of other TechBio companies that have raised during this month (November 2024),
🥧 Paris-based Biolevate raises €6 million for their AI-assisted medical writing platform,
🥧 Zurich-based Cradle raises €69.5 million to develop protein engineering with generative AI,
🥧 Converge Bio raised $5.5M to expedite drug discovery, development with GenAI,
🥧 Medeloop Brings $15.5 Million To Advance AI Medical Research,
🥧 Kainos Medicine invests $2.6 mil. in US AI-based single-cell analysis company,
🥧 GSK Wagers $80M on a Tech Platform and Parkinson’s Drug from Flagship-Founded Vesalius,
🥧 Accenture Invests in 1910 Genetics to Accelerate AI-Driven Drug Discovery,
🥧 NVentures Invests in Genesis Therapeutics’ AI Platform for Drug Development.
💠 Tempus AI Inc
Genetics Corp. (a medical diagnostics and testing company) announced on November 4, 2024 an agreement to be acquired for $600M by Tempus AI Inc (Tempus AI to Buy Ambry Genetics for $600M).
The Chicago-based Tempus—that specializes in AI and precision medicine and has one of the world’s largest libraries of clinical and molecular data—provides integrated solutions such as sequencing, companion diagnostics, clinical trial solutions, data collaborations, biological modeling and etc by applying AI. Apart the three companion diagnostic solutions (xT, xR, xF ), Tempus is also offering omics solutions, biological modeling (PanKRAS, PanCRC), sequencing (Tempus xT CDx*, Tempus xT, Tempus xR, Tempus xF+, Tempus xE, Tempus xG/xG+, Tempus xM Monitor and Tempus xM MRD) and data collaborations.
Tempus latest collaboration was announced on October 28, 2024, with JW Pharmaceutical (KRX: 001060), one of the most established pharmaceutical companies in Korea, to leverage both real-world data (RWD) and biological modeling to support efficient hypothesis generation and rapid validation in early therapeutic research in oncology (Tempus Announces Collaboration With JW Pharmaceutical to Apply Real-World Data and Biological Modeling to Enhance Early Research and Development).
💠 Cyrus Biotechnology Inc
On November 12, 2024, Cyrus Biotechnology 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, namely
preclinical work validating a next generation IgG-degrader (Immunoglobulin degrading enzyme from Streptococcus pyogenes, IdeS) for autoimmune disease and gene therapy pre-treatment,
demonstrating also the utility of Cyrus’s protein engineering platform for optimizing biologics to build validated, derisked and readily manufacturable development candidates.
Cyrus Bio is 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. Cyrus’ platform 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 and state-of-the-art protein engineering and assaying techniques.
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.
💠 PathAI Inc
On November 21, 2024, PathAI released PathExplore Fibrosis, an AI-based tool (for research use only and not for use in diagnostic procedures) that analyzes fibrosis and collagen structures from H&E-stained whole-slide tissue images. The software quantifies fibrotic areas and collagen fibers from standard pathology slides, replacing specialized staining techniques and microscopy equipment (PathAI launches AI tool for analyzing fibrosis in cancer tissue samples).
Boston Massachusetts-based PathAI, provides AI-powered research tools and services for digitizing and analyzing pathology images in order to make safer and more affordable the sub-typing of diseases like breast cancer. PathaAI has the pathology market’s first algorithm to use additive multiple instance learning (aMIL)—the AIM-HER2 Breast Cancer—that delivers automated digital HER2 scoring. MIL models enable spatial credit assignment such that the contribution of each region in the image can be exactly computed and visualized, to provide greater transparency for how AI predictions are made.
In April 2023, PathAI and ConcertAI announced a strategic partnership combining PathAI’s PathExplore™ tumor microenvironment panel with ConcertAI’s Patient360™ and RWD360™ products, to launch a first-in-class quantitative histopathology and curated clinical real-world data (RWD) solution. As of 2023, PathAI and Agilent Technologies Inc (NYSE: A) have a strategic partnership to deliver a solution that combines Agilent’s assay development expertise and PathAI’s algorithm development capabilities. By incorporating AI into CDx development, the partnership enables Agilent and PathAI to build integrated solutions with assays and ML analysis algorithms. PathAI works also with Roche Tissue Diagnostics (RTD) to expand digital pathology capabilities for companion diagnostics.
Finally, PathaAI has a multiyear drug discovery partnership with GlaxoSmithKline (LON: GSK) on advancing clinical trials and drug development in oncology and for nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), an aggressive type of fatty liver disease, by leveraging PathAI’s technologies, including the use of PathAI’s AIM-NASH tool. PathAI’s role will be to generate, digitize and analyze liver biopsy slides for central pathologist evaluation in addition to AI-powered histologic evaluation using PathAI’s AI-based measurement of NASH Histology (AIM-NASH) Tool, during HORIZON—a randomized Phase 2b non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) clinical trial—to measure improvements in liver histology with GSK4532990 compared with placebo in participants with NASH and advanced fibrosis.