AI Drug Discovery Firm Iktos, Backed by Pfizer, Partners with Elsevier to Enhance Reaxys Platform

Mar 06, 2024 18:59 CST Updated 18:59

Iktos

AI Technology Drug Developer

Elsevier

Medical Information Service Provider

With a history of 140 yearsGlobalLeadingInformation AnalysisCompanyElsevier and Iktos Establish Strategic Partnership

ElsevierThe creator of Reaxys, the world's largest chemical databaseReaxys is a chemistry research and education solution that provides chemical substance, property, reaction, and medicinal chemistry information for experimental chemistry and machine learning methods used in drug discovery and chemical or pharmaceutical R&D.

Reaxys provides the most comprehensive manually extracted and curated database of chemical and bioactivity information,Covering more than 1 billion published experimental facts, including 280 million organic, inorganic, and organometallic compounds, 74 million chemical reactions, and 46 million bioactive substances and journals from over 110 million documents (including patents).

Iktos is a French artificial intelligence company founded in 2016, specializing in developing AI solutions for medicinal chemistry and novel drug design. It is the only company offering generative models with built-in synthetic accessibility for successful drug discovery.

This collaboration aims to enhance Elsevier's Reaxys database by integrating Iktos's innovative synthetic planning AI technology, with the goal of providing the ability to accelerate the identification of preclinical candidates.

The integration of Iktos's artificial intelligence capabilities with Reaxys is designed toSimplify the Design-Make-Test-Analyze Cycle for Small Molecules, ultimately reducing the time and cost associated with early drug discovery.

By leveraging a new predictive model, this partnership will provide advanced support for retrosynthesis, synthetic accessibility, and reaction-based analysis through a user-friendly interface and application programming interface (API).

Mirit Eldor, Managing Director of Elsevier Life Science Solutions, said: "Our mission is to support R&D organizations in leveragingDrive innovation and drug discovery with our industry-leading predictive algorithms trained on high-quality data.”

"Iktos CEO Yann Gaston-Mathé stated, 'Data is the foundation of artificial intelligence, and we will combine the strengths of Reaxys with Iktos' leading retrosynthesis AI technology.'"

The new collaboration strengthens Elsevier's AI-centric strategy to leverage its unique big data capabilities.

In particular, Iktos provides a set of AGI solutions, includingMakya, an artificial intelligence-driven de novo design software for multi-parameter optimization (MPO) of lead compounds, Makya is available as software-as-a-service (SaaS) or for local deployment.

In addition, Iktos has developedSpaya(A synthesis planning software based on the company's proprietary retrosynthesis AI technology) and Spaya API(A high-throughput synthetic accessibility scoring tool for virtual molecular libraries). These tools are designed to simplify and accelerate the drug discovery process, from hit identification to lead optimization.

Since its establishment, Iktos has completed three rounds of financing, raising over 100 million yuan, and has more than 50 completed or ongoing projects.Partners include multinational pharmaceutical companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and Pfizer.

Iktos Chief Strategy Officer Quentin Perron stated that the company aims to halve the time required to identify preclinical candidates and cut the cost before clinical trials in half.

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