Bristol Myers Squibb and Exscientia Advance AI-Designed Immune-Modulating Candidate into Clinical Development

According to Leiphone, Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) recently announced it will utilize an immunomodulatory candidate drug developed by Exscientia.

Exscientia is an AI-driven pharmaceutical technology company that has designed three drug candidates currently in Phase I human clinical trials. Currently, Exscientia maintains offices in Oxford, Miami, Vienna, Osaka, and other locations. On April 27, Exscientia announced the completion of a $225 million Series D financing round led by the SoftBank Vision Fund. Additionally, the SoftBank Vision Fund has provided a further $300 million investment commitment, which Exscientia may draw upon at its discretion.

According to Leiphone(WeChat Official Account: Leiphone)Understood, Exscientia has two collaborations with Bristol-Myers Squibb Company, jointly focusing on multiple therapeutic areas, including oncology and immunology. In May this year, the two parties entered into a collaboration agreement with a potential value exceeding $1.2 billion.

The licensed drug candidate targets a key immune kinase that has proven difficult to target due to the need to balance selectivity with overall drug-like properties.

To design novel drug candidates capable of overcoming these challenges, Exscientia leverages its end-to-end platform to drive the discovery process, including AI-driven design, structural biology, chemistry, pharmacology, and late-stage preclinical studies.

Exscientia’s precision design approach focuses on simultaneously addressing parameters critical to the overall therapeutic profile, such as potency, selectivity, safety, and physicochemical properties. Its AI platform is well-suited for solving multi-objective design problems, thereby enabling the efficient and rapid discovery of novel drug candidates with superior properties.

Andrew Hopkins, CEO of Exscientia, commented: "We focus on patient-first AI technology to design precision-engineered drugs targeting challenging drug product profiles, demonstrating the high efficiency of our platform. This candidate molecule is the 150th novel compound designed and tested, identified within 11 months of initiating drug design. Through our collaboration with Bristol-Myers Squibb and leveraging its world-class clinical research and commercialization capabilities, we look forward to advancing this candidate to the next stage of development."

Rupert Vessey, President of Research and Development at Bristol-Myers Squibb, said: "We are pleased to license the first drug candidate from our strategic collaboration with Exscientia. AI-driven learning will continue to play a critical role in drug discovery, and Exscientia has already established a promising direction in immunology. We look forward to continuing our partnership and further advancing this candidate to deliver greater benefits to patients."

According to Leifeng.com, Bristol-Myers Squibb Company will be responsible for the clinical and commercial development of the candidate drug. Under the terms of the agreement, Exscientia will receive a $20 million option exercise fee, along with potential additional development milestone payments and royalties on net sales of any commercialized products.

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