BenevolentAIBenevolentAI is counting on co-founder Ken Mulvany to turn the company around from two years of setbacks leading to the departure of Joerg Moeller, MD, PhD, in October after just nine months as CEO. Mulvany rejoined the company’s board in May, and five months later was named executive chairman. Moeller’s exit followed the halt of its lead program BEN-2293 in mild-to-moderate atopic dermatitis after it failed to reduce itch and inflammation in a Phase IIa trial, several rounds of layoffs, and a stock whose price on Euronext Amsterdam has cratered 92% since May 2022, from €10 ($10.72) to €0.76 (77 cents) at the close of trading November 8. |
BioXcel TherapeuticsBioXcel’s pipeline is led by two Phase III acute treatment of agitation programs for lead candidate BXCL501—one associated with bipolar disorders or schizophrenia (at home), the other with Alzheimer’s dementia. The former is under study in the SERENITY At-Home trial (NCT05658510), launched in September, while the latter is the subject of the planned TRANQUILITY trial, whose protocol has been submitted to the FDA. Next year, BioXcel expects to launch a 100-patient trial assessing BXCL501 in acute stress disorder, through a collaboration with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill funded by a $2.8 million U.S. Department of Defense grant. In September, BioXcel deprioritized sales efforts for its approved drug Igalmi™ (dexmedetomidine) sublingual film. |
BullFrog AIA paper published September 24 in Cell Reports detailed the potential of BullFrog AI’s preclinical BF-114 (SPTBN1 siRNA) in treating metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH), and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Research led by Lopa Mishra, MBBS, of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories showed that by reducing β2-spectrin levels, BF-114 halted MASLD and MASH progression in animal models, and reduced liver damage. Bullfrog AI and the Lieber Institute for Brain Development (LIBD) have identified potential drug targets for multiple neuropsychiatric conditions, plus specific molecular pathways associated with bipolar disorder. Of 68 clusters from LIBD’s brain dataset, six groups of genes or proteins were found highly relevant to at least some bipolar disorder cases. |
IktosIktos applies generative AI and robotics to achieve drug discovery in “under 24 months” through software-as-a-service platforms Makya™ for generative drug design and Spaya™ for retrosynthesis, plus collaborations with biopharmas that include Bayer, Galapagos, Pfizer, and UCB. Iktos’ pipeline includes four preclinical candidates in oncology, immuno-oncology, inflammation, and autoimmune diseases. The company named a new Scientific Advisory Board in October, and in July acquired French biotech Synsight, a deal that enabled Iktos to expand its AI-based robotic synthesis platform Iktos Robotics with MT Bench™, a technology licensed from France’s National Institute of Health and Medical Research (INSERM) that detects protein-protein and RNA-protein interactions in cellulo, allowing for biological testing of synthesized compounds. |
Jura BioJura Bio generated excitement within AI in September when its research group posted a preprint introducing Variational Synthesis, a new type of generative protein model designed to enable real-world manufacturing of its generated designs at petascale. Jura says variational synthesis lets researchers build and sample from generative biological sequence models at scale in vitro and in silico, with potential for profound advances in drug discovery, enzyme design, and disease understanding. The team included CEO Elizabeth Wood, PhD; Eli Weinstein, PhD, Jura’s head of machine learning research; and George Church, PhD, of Harvard Medical School, Jura’s founder and Scientific Advisory Board chair. Jura launched last year with $16.1 million in financing. |
Phare BioFounded in 2020, Phare Bio has partnered with the lab of James J. Collins, PhD, at MIT and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard to build what the company says is the first-ever generative AI platform for novel antibiotic discovery. That effort was recognized in September when Phare and the Collins Lab were awarded up to $27 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to enhance their generative AI discovery platform and produce novel classes of antibiotics. Among goals for the funding: Generate millions of new training data points; develop the first open-source database for AI-based antibiotic discovery; and advance 15 novel AI-generated preclinical antibiotic candidates. |
Six Companies Worthy of Note in AI Drug Discovery
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