Iktos, a company specializing in Artificial Intelligence (AI) for new drug design, and Teijin Pharma Limited, the core company of the Teijin Group’s healthcare business that provides comprehensive healthcare services to improve the quality of life, today announced a strategic collaboration agreement in Artificial Intelligence for new drug design.
According to the industrial sources from Iktos, under the agreement, the Iktos generative modeling technology will be implemented and applied to several of Teijin Pharma’s small molecule drug discovery projects to expedite the identification of potential pre-clinical candidates.
Iktos and Teijin Pharma stated that they collaborated in developing new AI technology aiming to bring further improvement and speed to the drug design process, leveraging Iktos’ proprietary know-how in AI for Computer-Aided Drug Design (CADD) and complementing Teijin’s research and development capabilities.
Based on the recent drastic demographic change and increased health consciousness, Teijin Pharma claimed that it is committed to offering best-in-class healthcare solutions in the priority fields of bone, joint, rehabilitation, neurology, respiratory, cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.
The firm also added that creating innovative drugs is one of the company’s core business strategies and Teijin Pharma is now focusing on strengthening the technological foundation for small molecule drugs that play major roles among the drug modalities for innovative drug discovery.
According to leading healthcare industrial sources, over the years, Iktos has emerged as one of the world leaders in AI for drug design, establishing multiple collaborations with renowned pharmaceutical companies and successfully developing the AI software platforms Makya for new drug design and Spaya for synthesis planning. Iktos’ claimed that its generative AI technology is based on deep generative models, and automatically designs virtual novel molecules presenting the desirable characteristics specified by the researchers.
The firm stated that this unique approach aids them in achieving unprecedented efficiency in the exploration of chemical space and produces innovative molecule designs with greater freedom to operate. It is a novel solution, validated through much collaboration, to one of the key challenges in drug design: the rapid identification of molecules that simultaneously satisfy multiple parameters, such as potency, selectivity, safety, and project-specific properties.
Yann Gaston-Mathé, Co-founder and CEO of Iktos stated: “We are thrilled and proud to announce a strategic collaboration with Teijin Pharma, a leading company that contributes to society by providing advanced healthcare solutions. It is a major recognition for Iktos to be selected by Teijin Pharma as a strategic partner for the implementation, development, and application of generative modeling technology for new drug design. Iktos has been a pioneer in the application of generative models for drug discovery and is recognized as a world leader in the technology space that has the potential to disrupt the way new therapeutics are designed.’’
Mathe commented further that “Our ultimate objective is to expedite drug discovery and achieve time and cost efficiencies for our global collaborators by using Iktos’s proprietary AI platform and know-how. We are confident that together with our Teijin collaborators, we will be able to develop new technology to bring further speed and efficiency to drug discovery.”
Ichiro Watanabe, President of Teijin Pharma stated: “We are delighted to create innovative new small molecule drugs together with Iktos. We provide solutions in the field of demographic change and increased health consciousness and are focusing on the launch of new drugs. Iktos’ proprietary AI technology will dramatically accelerate our small molecule drug discovery. We continue to enhance patients’ quality of life by providing new treatment options for diseases with high unmet needs.”
