DenovAI will combine machine learning and computational biophysics to discover antibodies with broader scope, faster and cheaper, and to improve the probability of success of drug candidates. this The second company established by Teva's Innovation Lab, Pfizer, Merck, AssertaZeneca, Amazon (AWS), BioMed X and the Israel Biotech Foundation
AION Labs, The first innovation laboratory of its kind that mobilizes AI technologies and computational science to solve challenges in drug discovery and development, today announced the launch of the start-up - DenovAI. This is the lab's second startup company that has been launched. The new company will develop a biophysics solution powered by artificial intelligence that can discover potential antibodies "from scratch" (that is, from scratch) with computational tools and then suggest candidates that may produce effective drugs. The company is a spin-off of technology developed at the prestigious EMBL institute in Europe and the CEO of the company will move to Israel to establish the company at AION Labs.
DenovAI aims to build a next-generation computational platform for antibody design. In addition to funding, support and mentoring, AION Labs and its pharma partners will provide DenovAI with pharmaceutical information for model training and advanced machine learning development.
Therapeutic antibodies are well-established and proven life-saving drugs. Selecting a drug candidate from billions of potential antibody sequences is tedious and expensive, and in many cases fails to identify functional antibodies. DenovAI aims to build on recent advances in protein structure prediction, artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms, computational molecular biophysics techniques, and increased availability of experimentally determined antigen-antibody structures to create a new paradigm for AI-driven antibody discovery.
"We are developing an end-to-end AI framework that can predict antibody sequences and structures that bind with high affinity and selectivity to any given epitope. and with unlimited coverage of a continuum area. This has never been done before," said Dr. Kashif Sadiq, founder and CEO of DenovAI. "We have seen great progress in the field of therapeutic antibodies, but the process of developing new drugs is incredibly slow, very expensive and inefficient. With the support of AION Laboratories and its partners, we hope to develop an innovative solution that will change the entire field, and cut discovery schedules from months to days. This change can dramatically expand the scope of antibody treatment for many more diseases."
As mentioned, DenovAI will be led by Dr. Kashif Sadiq, a multidisciplinary scientist who worked to combine theoretical and computational physics methods with artificial intelligence to understand chemical and biological processes in high dimensions. He brings a wealth of research experience in computational biophysics, molecular binding, protein design, virology, enzymology and high-performance computing in all-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, nuclear MD simulations, chemical reaction kinetics, reaction-diffusion approaches. and machine/deep learning methods.
DenovAI intends to build on technology, co-invented by Dr. Kashif Sadiq at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), which is licensed to DenovAI by EMBL's wholly owned commercial subsidiary: EMBL Enterprise Management Technology Transfer GmbH (EMBLEM). EMBL is Europe's leading laboratory for life sciences with 28 member countries, including Israel, and more than 110 research groups and service teams covering the spectrum of molecular biology at six sites in Europe. EMBL, with the support of EMBLEM, intends to develop further cooperation with DenovAI further down the road.
"We look forward to a fruitful relationship with DenovAI in this exciting era of AI-driven therapeutic discovery," said Prof. Dr. Jan Korbel, Head of Data Science at EMBL.
DenovAI is the second startup founded by AION Labs, which creates early-stage startup teams that harness the power of artificial intelligence to transform the process of drug discovery and development to improve human health. The new company was created through investment from the leading pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Merck and Teva and with the close support of Amazon Web Services (AWS) and additional financial backing from the Israel Innovation Authority and the Israel Biotech Fund.
“At the intersection of biophysics, biotechnology and artificial intelligence, DenovAI has the potential to drive innovation in drug discovery, together with the resources and experience of the AION laboratory. This is our common goal", said Mati Gil, CEO of AION Labs. "We are excited to work with Dr. Sadiq in an attempt to solve one of the critical health problems in the world, while providing significant assistance in the creation of new drugs and direct assistance to patients who need them."
Founded and launched in late 2021, AION Labs builds its startups through a unique innovation model powered by BioMed X, identifies major R&D challenges in the industry and conducts a global talent search for top scientists. AION Labs then invites select groups of scientists and computational biologists to collaborate to solve the specific research and design challenge, before selecting a founding team and setting them up for success.
In September 2022, AION Labs announced the establishment of its first startup, OMEC.AI, which will develop AI-driven solutions to analyze preclinical data and identify gaps in efficacy and safety to improve the probability of success of clinical trial drug candidates.
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