On April 14, 2020 Hansoh Pharma (3692:HK), a leading biopharmaceutical company in China, and Atomwise, the leader in artificial intelligence (AI) for drug discovery, reported the expansion of their strategic partnership for AI-accelerated drug discovery (Press release, Atomwise, APR 14, 2020, View Source [SID1234556296]). Expansion of the partnership immediately follows completion of their first hit-discovery collaboration, which successfully identified and experimentally confirmed several novel hit compounds for a previously challenging oncology target in only 4 months.
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The collaboration began in November 2019, focusing on identifying hit compounds that are specific towards an intractable drug target. Atomwise performed AI-based molecular screening using their proprietary AI technology, AtomNet, to generate compound hits with predicted activity against multiple mutant forms of the oncology targets for Hansoh. With AtomNet, the collaboration was able to screen an ultra-large and diverse virtual library of over 12 billion compounds, finding 200 predicted candidates displaying specificity for the targets in only 2 weeks from a single virtual screen.
"We are really impressed by Atomwise’s capability to deliver potential candidates," said Rudi Bao, M.D. Ph.D., SVP of Hansoh R&D. "Our expanded partnership will accelerate major initiatives to discover innovative medicines for patients."
"It is a privilege to partner with Hansoh Pharma to develop their first-in-class or best-in-class portfolio of novel small molecule therapies," said Dr. Abraham Heifets, CEO of Atomwise. "Therapies with high specificity and potency are urgently needed for oncology, infectious diseases, and personalized medicine. We look forward to expanding our work with Hansoh on additional challenging targets."