image: Keen Therapeutics and Chemical.AI reached milestone in collaboration view more
Credit: Keen Therapeutics and Chemical.AI reached milestone in collaboration
Shanghai, China—November 14, 2022—Chemical.AI and Keen Therapeutics announce to have reached a major milestone in their strategic collaboration in a short period of time.
Ferroptosis, which is distinct from apoptosis, necroptosis and autophagy, is a new form of programmed cell death. Ferroptosis has become a hot research area in academia and industry since it was first discovered in 2012. The major regulatory mode of ferroptosis is through the SLC7A11/GPX4 pathway, which has been chosen to develop ferroptosis inducers by global biotech companies. In particular, small molecule inhibitors targeting GPX4 can achieve sustainable efficacy in a number of mice tumor models. However, developing small molecule GPX4 inhibitors is quite difficult due to the lack of possible drug-binding pockets, and existing tool compounds show low selectivity and poor pharmacokinetic properties. It is quite challenging to make a substantial breakthrough by simply modifying these tool compounds if there is no new strategy coming in place.
Based on the understanding of tumor biology, Keen Therapeutics has conducted target screening and selected several ferroptosis-related targets. Enabled by SECSE, an evolutionary algorithm empowered de novo drug design platform, it is possible to systematically explore the whole chemical space against these targets. Combined with the experience of chemical biologists and medicinal chemists, hundreds of molecules were designed, rapidly synthesized and subsequently optimized. In just less than two years, Keen Therapeutics has discovered compounds that are orally bioavailable and demonstrate good in vivo efficacy. The discovery of Keen would greatly advance the translational research in this field.
Dr. Yikai Wang, Founder & CEO of Keen Therapeutics, commented,” Chemical.AI’s team was established just one year ago but has already been able to complete rapid delivery of complex molecules and has met Keen Therapeutics’ request of weekly compound evaluation, greatly accelerating the design-make-test-analyze (DMTA) cycle and enhancing R&D efficiency. The rapid progress of the project could not have been achieved without the support of the strong chemical synthesis capabilities of Chemical.AI.”
Chemical.AI has set up an automated synthesis lab (ChemAILab) in 2021, leveraging AI, big data, automation and digitalization to provide professional and efficient chemical synthesis service. It speeds up DMTA cycle and facilitates drug discovery and development process. Dry lab and wet lab integration enables algorithms to acquire key data, structural storage and integrated reuse of metadata throughout the whole process. At the same time, ChemAIoT technology allows the automated synthesis platform to design routes and solve analysis, separation problems like chemical experts. AI has taken chemical synthesis from primary automation to intelligence automation, realizing structural data storage, remote decision-making and monitoring the entire "dispensing – reaction – sampling -monitoring -post-processing - separation" process online.
Until now, getting target molecules by organic synthesis is still the most time-consuming and difficult step in the drug discovery process. But the ability to synthesize complex molecules with precision and efficiency is crucial in the pre-clinical stage, particularly for small molecule drugs. Technically speaking, in the field of chemical synthesis, as labor costs rise and labor supply begins to decline, automation plays more and more important role. Automated organic synthesis means using robotic arms/robots to do organic reactions and collects data, which is precise, and traceable. It greatly improves production efficiency and reduces synthesis cost while ensuring data reliability.
Dr. Ning Xia, Founder & CEO of Chemical.AI, commented,” Keen Therapeutics has drawn significant attention in the industry from the beginning, as is part of the Roche Accelerator. The team of Keen Therapeutics has a deep understanding of AI-enabled drug discovery and has already made breakthrough progress in several early-stage targets in tumor metabolism in a very short amount of time, particularly in the field of ferroptosis. It is our honor to collaborate with Keen Therapeutics and to help their R&D projects move faster aiming to serve the unmet medical need of global patients soon.”
About Keen Therapeutics
Keen Therapeutics is a world-leading biotech start-up company with comprehensive translational research capabilities based on AI-empowered drug design. Focusing on oncology and immunology, the company partners up closely with novel CROs and CDMOs to minimize the costs and improve efficiency of preclinical drug discovery. Until now, Keen Therapeutics has completed several rounds of financing from top healthcare investors such as FreeS Fund, Sherpa Healthcare Partners and Peakvest. Keen Therapeutics’ progress in ferroptosis has been highly recognized by the Roche Accelerator and thus becoming part of the Roche Accelerator since Nov. 2021.
About Chemical.AI
Founded in 2018, Chemical.AI is one of the technology leading companies leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) and big data to transform research and development to shape the future of chemistry. ChemAIRS boosts success rates in synthesis route design and prediction with diverse synthesis strategies. In 2021, Chemical.AI also established an AIoT automation lab (ChemAILab) in Shanghai to bring dry lab and wet lab together to provide more professional and efficient chemical synthesis services to the industry.
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