On April 1, 2024 Turbine, a company that is building the world’s first predictive simulation of patient biology, and Harmonic Discovery (Harmonic), a therapeutics company building an integrated computational and experimental platform for kinase drug discovery and targeted polypharmacology, reported to have entered into a collaboration to co-develop novel cancer therapies that will inhibit a dark kinase identified for cancer dependency using Turbine’s Simulated Cell platform (Press release, Harmonic Discovery, APR 1, 2024, View Source [SID1234641675]).
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"We believe that the dark kinase NEK1 holds great potential as a drug target for developing cancer therapies addressing important resistance challenges in the clinic," said Daniel Veres, M.D., Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer and Co-Founder of Turbine. "Coupling Harmonic’s deep expertise in multi-specific kinase-targeted drug design with our unique ability to guide drug discovery by running simulated experiments with causal interpretation in a vast biological search space will help realize a more innovative and efficient process than traditional approaches. We are excited for the opportunity to demonstrate the power of our platforms to collectively boost R&D success in the clinic."
"Our fully integrated kinase drug discovery platform aims to challenge current drug discovery paradigms by building a machine learning-first infrastructure that integrates multiple aspects of kinase drug discovery," said Rayees Rahman, Ph.D., CEO and Co-Founder of Harmonic Discovery. "Turbine’s exciting biological simulation technology is highly complementary to our approach. We are confident that integrating both companies’ innovative platforms will yield a radically more effective approach to selecting and advancing kinase-targeted therapies that can substantially improve patient outcomes in oncology."
The collaboration provides a framework in which biological and mechanistic insights from Turbine’s simulations will directly inform Harmonic’s generative chemistry models – with the goal of bringing forward new, differentiated, and effective kinase inhibitor therapies for the patients who need them most. Harmonic will assume responsibilities for computational chemistry and medicinal chemistry activities, while Turbine will be responsible for in silico simulations and wet-lab validation of target biology, including the identification of both synergistic kinase co-targets to NEK1 and patient populations most likely to benefit from therapies. Financial terms of the collaboration are not disclosed.