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John Snow Labs Acquires WiseCube to Enhance Medical AI with Billion-Scale Knowledge Graphs

AIDrug Discovery
  • John Snow Labs has acquired WiseCube, a pioneer in biomedical knowledge graphs and AI-powered literature analysis, to strengthen its healthcare AI solutions with billion-scale knowledge platform capabilities.
  • The acquisition will enable enhanced biomedical literature review through unique algorithms that analyze unstructured data and medical ontologies to generate new scientific hypotheses.
  • WiseCube's technology will accelerate drug discovery by surfacing hidden relationships among drugs, genes, and diseases, shortening the path from discovery to clinical trials.
  • The integration includes WiseCube's Pythia service with hallucination detection tools to monitor AI-generated responses for alignment with verified medical knowledge, improving safety and compliance of medical AI applications.

Magnitude Biosciences Secures £700K to Advance High-Throughput Drug Discovery Platform

Drug Discovery
  • Durham University spin-out Magnitude Biosciences raised £700,000 through investors and grants to develop its WormGazer high-throughput screening platform for age-related conditions and difficult-to-treat diseases.
  • The company's technology integrates robotics, machine learning, and liquid culture systems to screen thousands of compounds weekly, with several top 10 pharmaceutical companies already using the platform in pilot programs.
  • The funding will enable creation of highly skilled jobs in robotics, software engineering, and biological sciences at the company's NETPark facility in County Durham.
  • Investment was led by Maven and included NPIF II - Maven Equity Finance, Finance Durham Fund, existing investor Northstar Ventures, and matched grant funding from Innovate UK.

Applied Cognition Achieves First Continuous Human Glymphatic Monitoring, Unlocking New Alzheimer's Drug Targets

Drug Discovery
  • Applied Cognition published a groundbreaking study in Nature Biomedical Engineering demonstrating the first continuous, non-invasive measurement of human glymphatic function using novel electrical impedance spectroscopy technology.
  • The platform enables real-time monitoring of the brain's waste clearance system that removes Alzheimer's-associated proteins like amyloid and tau, overcoming limitations of slow, high-cost MRI scans.
  • The company has already identified a promising drug candidate that improves glymphatic clearance in early clinical trials and is advancing its lead program for early-stage Alzheimer's disease.
  • The technology revealed for the first time in humans how EEG and cardiovascular physiology contribute to sleep-active glymphatic activity, opening new avenues for drug discovery.

Selvita Becomes First CRO to License Medicines Discovery Catapult's Patented Target Engagement Technology

Drug Discovery
  • Selvita has become the first contract research organization to license Medicines Discovery Catapult's Chemical Protein Stability Assay (CPSA), a patented technology designed to accelerate drug candidate identification and prioritization.
  • The CPSA technology offers a streamlined, single-plate format for assessing target engagement that improves consistency and throughput compared to traditional multi-step assays.
  • This licensing agreement enables Selvita to integrate the novel technology into its early discovery screening cascades, supporting rapid assessment of drug-target engagement at scales compatible with hit identification campaigns.
  • The technology uses cell lysates to allow protein screening in native contexts without complex purification workflows, making it applicable across various cellular protein targets and screening stages.

Insilico Medicine Predicts First AI-Designed Drugs to Reach Market by 2030

AIDrug Discovery
  • Insilico Medicine CEO Alex Zhavoronkov predicts the first fully AI-designed drugs could be available to patients within five to six years, marking a potential breakthrough in pharmaceutical development.
  • The company has developed 22 clinical-stage candidates using its end-to-end AI platform, with one idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis drug showing a 98 mL increase in lung capacity over placebo in Phase I trials.
  • Insilico has achieved unprecedented development timelines, with their fastest candidate reaching clinical stage in just nine months compared to the traditional 12-year drug development cycle.
  • The company has successfully out-licensed three AI-generated drug candidates to pharmaceutical partners, earning several hundred million dollars and validating the commercial viability of AI-driven drug discovery.

Insilico Medicine Develops AI-Designed ENPP1 Inhibitor ISM5939 for Cancer Immunotherapy

AIDrug Discovery
  • Insilico Medicine used generative AI platforms PandaOmics and Chemistry42 to discover and design ISM5939, a highly selective oral ENPP1 inhibitor that modulates the STING pathway for cancer immunotherapy.
  • ISM5939 demonstrated superior potency with IC50 values of 0.63 nM against cGAMP degradation and showed synergistic effects when combined with anti-PD-1 therapy and chemotherapy in preclinical studies.
  • The compound exhibits a wider therapeutic index compared to direct STING agonists, avoiding systemic cytokine release and T-cell apoptosis while effectively enhancing antitumor immunity in multiple solid tumor types.

BioMed X and Boehringer Ingelheim Complete Groundbreaking Schizophrenia Research Project

Drug Discovery
  • BioMed X Institute and Boehringer Ingelheim have successfully completed their second neuroscience collaboration focused on schizophrenia, with Boehringer Ingelheim acquiring the research data for further development.
  • The research team, led by Dr. Ebru Ercan Herbst, developed novel platforms to study myelination and oligodendrocyte development in schizophrenia, including in vitro models published in Cell Press and relevant mouse models.
  • RNA analysis of post-mortem brain samples revealed differentially expressed genes in oligodendrocytes of schizophrenia patients, potentially leading to new therapeutic approaches for multiple psychiatric disorders sharing hypomyelination pathology.

Synfini and Multispan Partner to Accelerate GPCR Drug Discovery Using AI and Automation

AIDrug Discovery
  • Synfini, Inc. and Multispan have formed a strategic collaboration to co-discover and develop drug candidates targeting an undisclosed G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR), combining AI-driven chemistry with specialized GPCR biology expertise.
  • The partnership leverages Synfini's AI Cloud Foundry platform to accelerate "design-make-test-analyze" cycles in molecular discovery, with early collaboration milestones already achieved according to Multispan's CEO.
  • Beyond their initial target, the companies will make their combined technology platforms commercially available as a "one-stop shop" for accelerated drug discovery, offering AI, automation, and cutting-edge biology services to external clients.

VantAI and Blueprint Medicines Expand Collaboration to Tackle "Undruggable" Targets with AI-Powered Proximity Therapeutics

AIDrug Discovery
  • VantAI and Blueprint Medicines have expanded their strategic collaboration for the second time since 2022, incorporating additional drug programs focused on targets previously considered undruggable.
  • The expanded agreement makes VantAI eligible for up to $1.67 billion in milestone payments plus royalties, highlighting significant industry validation for their AI-driven approach to induced proximity therapeutics.
  • The collaboration will leverage VantAI's recently announced Neo-1 foundation model, the first AI system capable of generating molecular glues and other protein-protein interaction modifiers to address complex therapeutic challenges.

A Study of HLD-0915 in Patients With Metastatic Castration Resistant Prostate Cancer (mCRPC)

NCT06800313RecruitingPhase 1
Halda Therapeutics OpCo, Inc.
Posted 2/24/2025

Merck and imec Partner to Develop Advanced Microphysiological Systems Platform for Drug Discovery

Drug DiscoveryAI
• Merck and imec have announced a strategic partnership to develop an advanced Microphysiological Systems (MPS) platform that aims to improve drug discovery efficiency and reduce reliance on animal testing.
• The collaboration integrates organoid biology models with semiconductor hardware, incorporating biosensing and microfluidic capabilities to provide real-time insights from individual organs to multi-organ connected systems.
• The jointly developed modular system will feature standardized interfaces compatible with Merck's portfolio of stem cells and patient-derived organoids, enabling more reliable predictions of human organ responses to drug stimuli.

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