Milner Therapeutics Institute and LifeArc extend strategic partnership

On June 27, 2022 LifeArc reported collaboration with the Milner Therapeutics Institute has been expanded into a five year strategic partnership until 2026 (Press release, LifeArc, JUN 27, 2022, View Source [SID1234616312]). This is great news as it means we can build on the work we’ve already done to identify new drug targets for a range of diseases that could ultimately help patients.

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LifeArc and Milner’s computational research group, led by Dr Namshik Han, have been working closely together since we first announced the partnership in 2018.

Key achievements
So far, the team has made some great achievements:

Worked together to create a bespoke artificial intelligence (AI) platform and computational pipeline to reveal new disease signatures and identified new targets
Identified new disease signatures for six cancer types in the LifeArc programme
Repositioned an existing LifeArc target as a potential therapeutic for cancer
Uncovered hidden pathways and repositioned 200 approved drugs against COVID-19
Extending the collaboration means the teams will develop a bespoke AI platform and infrastructure that will revolutionise target identification and biomarker discovery. This platform will be used to:

identify new therapeutic targets in a variety of diseases
discover biomarkers to improve personalised medicine
predict the efficacy and safety of new and existing drugs and identify existing drugs that could be repurposed.
Dr Dave Powell, LifeArc’s Chief Scientific Officer said:

"Our collaboration with the Milner Therapeutics Institute allows us to combine LifeArc’s translational expertise with the Milner’s cutting-edge bioinformatics. By continuing to work together, we can further our understanding of the fundamental biology of disease pathways that informs our patient-focused programmes."

Dr Namshik Han, Head of Computational Research and AI at the Milner Therapeutics Institute said:

"This collaboration has benefited enormously from the expertise of the LifeArc team in drug discovery. We see great potential to now build on the database resources and pipelines we have created together and apply them to reveal new disease signatures in areas with high unmet medical need."