Announced today (December 4), the agreement will combine Absci’s Integrated Drug Creation platform with AstraZeneca’s expertise in oncology, to accelerate the discovery of a potential new cancer treatment.
Absci will contribute its pioneering generative AI technology to deliver a therapeutic candidate antibody for a specified oncology target. The agreement includes an upfront commitment, R&D funding, milestone payments, and royalties on product sales.
“AstraZeneca is a leader in developing novel treatments in oncology, and we are excited to collaborate with them to design a therapeutic candidate antibody with the potential to improve the lives of cancer patients,” said Sean McClain, Absci founder and CEO.
“This agreement advances Absci’s goal of creating a new generation of life-changing and transformative therapeutics using its AI platform.”
Measuring millions of protein-protein interactions
The platform harnesses generative AI and a suite of scalable wet-lab technologies. The platform generates proprietary data by measuring millions of protein-protein interactions. These data are used to train Absci’s proprietary AI models and, in later iterations, to validate antibodies designed using the de novo AI models.
It accelerates drug discovery by completing the cycle of data collection, AI-driven design, and wet lab validation within an estimated six weeks. It aims to enhance the likelihood of successful development outcomes for biologic drug candidates by optimizing multiple drug attributes concurrently and expanding the universe of drug targets to include those previously deemed “undruggable” such as GPCRs and ion channels.
Puja Sapra, is senior vice president of Biologics Engineering & Oncology Targeted Delivery, at AstraZeneca.
New antibody therapy
She said, “This collaboration is an exciting opportunity to utilize Absci’s de novo AI antibody creation platform to design a potential new antibody therapy in oncology.”
Today’s agreement comes hot on the heels of Absci’s publication on the design and validation of de novo antibodies using Absci’s state-of-the-art ‘zero-shot’ generative AI model. It follows additional collaborations with leading biopharmaceutical, healthcare and technology organizations.
Absci is a generative AI drug creation company that combines AI with scalable wet lab technologies and says its mission is to create better biologics for patients, faster. Its Integrated platform unlocks the potential to accelerate time to clinic and increase the probability of success by simultaneously optimizing multiple drug characteristics important to both development and therapeutic benefit.
