On April 4, 2023 Absci Corporation (Nasdaq: ABSI), a generative AI drug creation company, and M2GEN, an oncology bioinformatics company with the most advanced lifetime-consented clinicogenomics data to accelerate discovery research, reported a partnership to create new cancer medicines and bring them to market at unprecedented speed (Press release, M2Gen, APR 4, 2023, View Source [SID1234629803]). Absci’s generative AI drug creation platform will tap into M2GEN’s clinical and molecular data set, ORIEN AVATAR (AVATAR), to accelerate the creation of therapeutics for a range of malignancies and patient profiles, bringing AI drug creation to the fight against cancer.
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A key challenge in creating effective cancer treatments is finding specific antigens that can be targeted by immunotherapies. M2GEN’s AVATAR database represents a valuable resource for discovering such antigens. Absci will use its reverse immunology technology to first search the database for antibodies from patients with exceptional immune responses, then computationally re-assemble antigen-antibody pairs as promising starting points for drug development.
This partnership brings together AI drug creation technology and oncology bioinformatics to potentially reduce the time and cost to create better cancer treatments. Absci’s Integrated Drug Creation platform unites generative AI and wet-lab capabilities to screen billions of cells per week, allowing it to go from AI-designed antibodies to lab-validated candidates in as little as six weeks. As the nexus between patients, researchers, and the pharmaceutical industry, M2GEN is uniquely positioned and equipped with the richest clinicogenomic data set, and a lifetime patient-consented Total Cancer Care (TCC) protocol, to accelerate drug discovery and development and transform how cancer is treated. M2GEN’s real-world data set comes from its Oncology Research Information Exchange Network (ORIEN) partners, an alliance of 18 cancer centers across more than a dozen U.S. states.
"M2GEN and its ORIEN partners are premier leaders in the field of oncology data research and bring a wealth of unique data sets to our generative AI platform that may enable us to ultimately shave years off the drug discovery process," said Sean McClain, CEO of Absci. "This is an important leap forward to better understand individualized protein-protein interactions on cancer cells, moving us toward delivering on the promise of personalized medicine."
The cornerstone of ORIEN is the lifetime-consented TCC protocol, one of the first longitudinal cancer patient databases of its kind, with over 360,000 patients enrolled nationwide. TCC enables patient monitoring throughout their treatment journey, with the goal to transform how cancer is treated. M2GEN and ORIEN research-facilitated projects are monitored by a multi-institution governing body, which includes scientists and research leaders from network members, to ensure adherence to privacy protocols and best practices.
"Absci’s recent breakthrough creating de novo antibodies changed the idea of what’s possible for drug discovery," said Jim Gabriele, CEO of M2GEN. "This was just one of the things that excited us about partnering together. Their AI-led approach to targeting biologics to make the drug discovery process more efficient and dramatically impact patients’ lives made them an ideal partner," said Gabriele. "Together, by utilizing our real-world data, we plan to advance personalized cancer treatments in pursuit of a cure."
This partnership maintains Absci’s momentum building one of the largest repositories of patient data in the industry to train its generative AI platform for protein drug creation. The company recently partnered with St. John’s Cancer Institute to train on their datasets to discover medicines faster.