CytoReason Ltd.

今年的诺贝尔奖相继揭晓，人工智能（AI）无疑成为了焦点。AI学者不仅摘得了2024年诺贝尔物理学奖，诺贝尔化学奖也颁发给了三位与AI相关领域的科学家。谷歌DeepMind公司的Demis Hassabis博士和John Jumper博士，因其在蛋白质结构预测领域的突破性贡献获奖，他们的研究解决了这一领域50年来的重大挑战。与此同时，华盛顿大学的David Baker教授则因其在计算蛋白设计方面的卓越成就获此殊荣。这些AI驱动的科研成果极大地推动了生物医药领域的科学发现，也彰显了AI在制药领域的潜力和价值。在此背景下，AI制药行业也迎来了蓬勃发展。仅在2024年第三季度，全球至少有35家AI制药公司获得了总计超过10亿美元的融资。值得关注的亮点包括： 早期融资占比过半：早期融资（B轮及以前）事件占比近70%；全球共有8家AI制药企业获A轮融资，总融资额超2亿美元，8家初创企业获得种子轮融资，总金额超5000万美元。 Flagship Pioneering先后推出两家新锐公司：Flagship分别投资5000万美元，孵化出了AI助力的基因药物递送平台Mirai Bio和可编程生物制剂研发公司Abiologics。 公司类型多元：获得融资的公司中，业务类型涵盖小分子药物发现到细胞疗法研发的众多药物类型，并且以打造AI技术平台的平台型公司和专注于AI辅助药物管线发现的研发型公司数量平分秋色。 BioAge Labs成功登陆纳斯达克，IPO募资1.98亿美元 BioAge Labs是一家抗衰老研究公司，目前共有3个研究方向：代谢和肌肉衰老、免疫衰老和大脑衰老。公司致力于通过绘制人类衰老图谱并利用独有的AI药物发现平台，以开发治疗疾病和延长健康寿命的创新药物。BioAge Labs的主要候选药物Azelaprag是一种口服小分子药物，属于Apelin受体激动剂。该产品正在与礼来GLP-1/GI受体激动剂Tizepatide联合开展减肥2期临床试验，它还将于明年上半年与诺和诺德减肥产品Wegovy联合进入2期试验。 9月26日，BioAge Labs在纳斯达克上市，募资1.98亿美元，该融资所得将用于推动其减肥管线的临床试验。 Outpace Bio完成1.44亿美元B轮融资 Outpace Bio是一家细胞疗法公司，利用人工智能蛋白质设计对免疫细胞进行编程，以改善实体瘤患者体内功能。公司的技术平台致力于利用人工智能，设计具有自然界中没有的全新功能的蛋白和调控回路。并且利用这些全新蛋白和调控回路精密调节细胞的分化状态以及信号通路，从而让它们在合适的时间产生合适的作用。 Outpace Bio的主打项目OPB-101是一种针对间皮素的CAR-T细胞，利用Outpace的专有技术OUTSMART、OUTLAST、OUTSPACER和OUTSAFE进行增强，计划于2025年获得IND许可并首次在晚期铂耐药性上皮性卵巢癌、输卵管癌或原发性腹膜癌患者进行给药。 8月1日，公司宣布完成超额认购的B轮融资，筹集1.44亿美元，获得的资金将用于推进多种T细胞候选疗法，以期在实体肿瘤治疗中获得早期临床概念验证。此外，这些资金还将支持Outpace利用其模块化技术平台扩展未来的产品线。 Superluminal Medicines完成1.2亿美元A轮融资 成立于2023年，Superluminal Medicines是一家致力于推动小分子药物研发的速度和准确性的开发差异化药物管线的生成生物和化学公司。公司利用深厚的生物学和化学专业知识、机器学习以及专有的大数据基础设施，快速开发创建候选化合物。平台采用预测-设计-测试架构，精确模拟蛋白质形状，并设计高度选择性的化合物，以达到治疗效果。 公司由业内领先的AI药物发现上市公司Schrödinger前高管Cony D'Cruz先生和知名风投RA Capital Management的Ajay Yekkirala先生共同创立。目前，Superluminal的开发重点集中于高价值的G蛋白偶联受体（GPCR）靶点药物的开发。 9月9日，Superluminal Medicines公司宣布完成1.2亿美元的A轮融资。获得资金将用于支持该公司的主打在研项目进入临床开发，并增加针对GPCR靶点的小分子药物发现项目。 Circle Pharma完成9000万美元D轮融资 Circle Pharma是一家致力于包括口服等多种给药途径的细胞渗透性大环化合物的发现和开发的生物技术公司，其MXMO平台结合了基于结构的合理药物设计和先进的合成化学，开发了新一代大环疗法，用于靶向具有挑战性的靶点。目前公司将开发重点放在细胞周期蛋白上，这类蛋白是控制细胞在细胞周期中进展机制的主要调节器，也是许多癌症的关键驱动因素。 9月3日，Circle Pharma宣布完成9000万美元的D轮融资，此轮融资的资金将用于资助其细胞周期蛋白A/B（cyclin A/B）RxL抑制剂CID-078的临床开发。CID-078是一种多肽类抗肿瘤药物，目前处于早期临床阶段。 CytoReason获得8000万美元战略投资 CytoReason是一家致力于开发计算疾病模型的技术公司。该公司使用来自医药合作伙伴的真实数据来构建组织和细胞的特定模型以模拟各种疾病，然后利用其机器学习AI探索这些模型，能够突出不同患者群体和治疗方法之间的差异，潜在地为候选新药确定更有效的进攻路径。 CytoReason的平台是由70名经验丰富的生物学家、生物信息学家和数据工程师组成的多学科团队开发的。该平台使医药和生物技术公司能够优先考虑新目标、寻找生物标志物并预测哪些患者可能对新疗法产生最佳的反应，从而缩短试验阶段、降低开发成本并增加药物获批的可能性。 7月17日，公司宣布获得OurCrowd、英伟达（NVIDIA）、辉瑞（Pfizer）和赛默飞世尔（Thermo Fisher Scientific）总计8000万美元的融资。CytoReason将利用这笔投资将其模型的应用扩展到其他适应症，增加其专有的分子和临床数据。 Mirai Bio获5000万美元A轮融资 Mirai由Flagship Pioneering于2021年创立，旨在提供开源技术平台，与生物技术公司合作开发优化的基因药物（genetic medicines）。公司的技术平台包括高通量自动化、体内多重筛选、机器学习等前沿技术，能够产生大量数据并且通过优化的迭代循环，同时优化基因药物的递送、设计和生产，提高疗法开发的成功率和开发速度。 9月28日，公司宣布获得Flagship Pioneering的5000万美元A轮投资，资金将用于促进该公司技术平台的开发，以及在多个疾病治疗领域和治疗模式中加速基因药物的开发。 Flagship推出新锐公司Abiologics Abiologics是一家通过创造名为Synteins的可编程药物，重新定义生物制品的公司。Synteins是一种在自然界中不存在的全新药物类型，它通过计算设计生成，并使用新型的合成构建块，赋予其独特的特性，能够为各类疾病患者提供变革性的治疗。该公司的技术平台依托先进的生成式人工智能，从头计算设计Synteins，使用广泛的人工构建模块，突破了目前生物制品仅依赖20种天然氨基酸的局限。Synteins能够被编程从而与几乎所有治疗靶点相互作用，并且巧妙地规避身体的自然免疫防御机制。 7月24日，Flagship Pioneering初步承诺投资5000万美元以推进该公司的平台并开发多样化的药物管线，初步重点是肿瘤学和免疫学适应症。 读者们请星标⭐创鉴汇，第一时间收到推送 免责声明：药明康德内容团队专注介绍全球生物医药健康研究进展。本文仅作信息交流之目的，文中观点不代表药明康德立场，亦不代表药明康德支持或反对文中观点。本文也不是治疗方案推荐。如需获得治疗方案指导，请前往正规医院就诊。 版权说明：本文由药明康德内容团队根据公开资料整理编辑，欢迎个人转发至朋友圈，谢绝媒体或机构未经授权以任何形式转发/复制至其他平台。转发授权请在「创鉴汇」微信公众号留言联系我们。 更多数据内容推荐 点击“在看”，分享创鉴汇健康新动态

Israeli startup CytoReason, maker of a computation model to map and compare treatments, announced it secured $80 million in funding. Pfizer, OurCrowd, NVIDIA and Thermo Fisher Scientific participated in the round. WHAT IT DOES CytoReason offers life sciences companies AI-enabled tools to gather data-driven and molecular-level insights to improve phase 2 success in clinical trials and optimize research and development. The company's model provides insights into datasets and literature, cell states, what drives disease progression over time, disease variation between patients, cell composition, cell interactions based on biological features in tissues and the effects of various treatments on disease. It will use the funds to expand the use of its models for different indications, grow its molecular and clinical data and open an office in Cambridge, Massachusetts, later this year. "The rapid expansion of new technologies, like artificial intelligence, holds tremendous potential to help transform what is possible in human health," Mikael Dolsten, chief scientific officer and president of worldwide research, development and medical at Pfizer, said in a statement. "Our collaboration with CytoReason leverages its cutting-edge immunology multiomics platform to augment Pfizer’s own R&D capabilities and generate invaluable insights into new drug development pathways for patients. We’re pleased to see the company’s recent growth and look forward to our continued work together." MARKET SNAPSHOT CytoReason launched a collaboration with Pfizer in 2019 for the pharma giant to use its biological models in its drug development programs. The companies expanded their partnership in 2022, when Pfizer made a $20 million equity investment in CytoReason with the option to license its platform and disease models. According to the agreement, Pfizer would also fund additional projects. The deal was potentially worth up to $100 million over five years. Other companies using AI for drug discovery include EvolutionaryScale, which uses biology-focused language models for drug discovery and therapeutic development. The company recently announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services and secured $142 million in seed funding. Google Research and Google DeepMind announced the development of an LLM for drug discovery and therapeutic development dubbed Tx-LLM, which utilizes the tech giant's generative AI technology, MedPaLM-2. The LLM constructs the Therapeutics instruction Tuning (TxT) collection by interleaving free-text instructions with representations of small molecules. TxT was then used to prompt and fine-tune Tx-LLM, the therapeutics large language model, to solve classification, regression and generation tasks involved with drug discovery and therapeutic development. Google said Tx-LLM shows promise as an end-to-end therapeutic development assistant.

Global technology giant Nvidia's layout in the field of AI pharmaceuticals has once again attracted attention, this time, it has chosen to join forces with the world's leading pharmaceutical company Pfizer to jointly invest in Israeli startup CytoReason. CytoReason's $80 million Series B funding round, which includes Pfizer, Nvidia and Thermo Feld, shows strong industry recognition of the potential of the company's technology. It is worth noting that this is Pfizer's second investment in CytoReason, and the two companies have been working together for more than five years, demonstrating the depth of trust in each other's technologies and strategies. As an innovative Israeli company, CytoReason is unique in its cell-level disease modeling technology. The technology takes the cell as the research unit, in-depth analysis of the mechanism of disease, and aims to help pharmaceutical companies solve key problems in the process of drug development. Unlike most AI pharmaceutical companies, which are focused on preclinical applications, CytoReason is focused on using machine learning to solve the biological problems of drug discovery, such as how to accurately target therapeutic targets, indications, and patient populations. With multi-dimensional data, such as genetics, genomics, and proteomics, CytoReason builds a vast library of cellular immune system models. These models provide valuable decision support for pharmaceutical companies, from target discovery to clinical trial design, and are expected to help companies find more efficient paths through the complex maze of drug discovery, significantly improving the success rate of Phase 2 clinical trials. With the deep penetration of AI technology in the pharmaceutical industry, and the active participation of industry giants such as Nvidia and Pfizer, innovative companies such as CytoReason are expected to lead the industry to achieve more breakthroughs. This will not only accelerate the development of new drugs, reduce the cost of research and development, but is more likely to open a new chapter in drug development, bringing more effective and safer treatment options to patients around the world.