Amgen Partners with PostEra to Advance Up to Five AI-Designed Small Molecule Drug Programs

▎Edited by the WuXi AppTec content team

PostEra Announces Multi-Target Research Collaboration with AmgenPostEra's Innovative Artificial Intelligence Platform Proton, leveraging Amgen's extensive experience and expertise in drug discovery, aims toAccelerate the development of up to five small molecule drug projects。

PostEra's end-to-end machine learning platform Proton focuses on the medicinal chemistry aspect of drug discovery.This technology aims to address some key challenges in small molecule drug discovery and industrialize the design-make-test cycle in medicinal chemistry.In the design phase, by integrating its unique data and machine learning, this platform can design optimized molecules that meet the various characteristics required for candidate drugs. In terms of synthesis, the platform ensures that the designed molecules have reliable synthetic pathways, and by utilizing shared synthetic intermediates, multiple molecules can be generated in parallel. In the testing phase, innovative active learning technology enables the platform to collect the most instructive data in each cycle.

PostEra, founded in 2019, not only advances small molecule projects with biopharmaceutical partners but also actively develops its internal pipeline.The company has reached AI pharmaceutical R&D collaborations totaling $1 billion with multiple biopharmaceutical companies.At the beginning of this year, Pfizer and PostEra announced the expansion of their existing strategic partnership to establish an artificial intelligence laboratory aimed at jointly advancing multiple drug discovery programs. This lab will be based on data provided by Pfizer and will leverage PostEra's expertise to design novel machine learning algorithms for medicinal chemistry. Its machine learning platform can optimize the entire molecular design process, has a high accuracy rate in predicting organic reaction outcomes, and can devise new synthetic pathways for challenging molecules. The initial focus of the collaboration will be on oncology and anti-COVID-19 therapeutic drugs.

[1] PostEra Announces a Research Collaboration with Amgen to Discover Small Molecule Therapeutics using Artificial Intelligence. Retrieved November 16, 2023, from https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/postera-announces-a-research-collaboration-with-amgen-to-discover-small-molecule-therapeutics-using-artificial-intelligence-301990088.html