Model Medicines, Sanford Burnham Prebys forge AI-driven drug discovery partnership

AI drug discovery software company Model Medicines has signed a multi-target collaboration agreement with California-based Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute for identifying and developing drugs for novel antiviral targets.

The collaboration will make use of Model Medicines’ ActivPred AI Drug Discovery Platform, a drug, target, and disease agnostic digital chemistry engine, in conjunction with the identification of novel antiviral targets and deep scientific expertise of Sanford Burnham Prebys. Using these, the partners plan to discover and develop new therapies for infectious diseases such as SARS-CoV-2.

Initially, the partnership will focus on Covid-19 with the companies aiming to develop and advance broad-spectrum antivirals for today’s infectious diseases and those yet to be known in the future.

Sumit Chanda – director of the Immunity and Pathogenesis Program at Sanford Burnham Prebys said: “We are very excited to partner with Model Medicines on this important endeavor to identify novel therapeutics to treat the immediate threat of SARS-CoV-2 today and prepare for the pandemics of tomorrow.

“We believe that our research partnership with Model Medicines will demonstrate that the combination of biology, chemistry and artificial intelligence can disrupt the traditional drug discovery process. The result of which has the potential to bring treatments to the market, on demand, at a fraction of the time, money, and effort, as well as with greater efficacy than traditional approaches.”

Model Medicines, Sanford Burnham Prebys forge AI-driven drug discovery partnership. Photo courtesy of Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.

Model Medicines is said to have created an infectious disease specific version of its ActivPred AI Drug Discovery Platform that solely focuses on identifying safe and effective, non-obvious therapeutics that have activity against the novel biological targets identified by Sanford Burnham Prebys.

The digital chemistry drug discovery platform utilizes artificial intelligence based on fundamental chemistry for discovering drugs active against the novel biological targets that are otherwise not resolved with conventional high throughput screening approaches.

Daniel Haders – executive chairman at Model Medicines said: “We are grateful to be working with Dr. Chanda, a renowned expert in infectious disease biology, and our colleagues at Sanford Burnham Prebys, one of the most storied biomedical institutes in the world.

“Dr. Chanda’s expertise in virology coupled with our cheminformatic approach to AI drug discovery has the potential to identify potent therapeutics for novel viral targets which will help meet the needs of patients suffering with COVID-19 today and patients afflicted with the infectious diseases of tomorrow.”