AstraZeneca and Schrödinger Expand Collaboration to Accelerate Biologics Drug Discovery Using Advanced Computational Platform

Last September, Schrödinger, a company focused on leveraging computational platforms to accelerate drug development, entered into a multi-year collaboration with AstraZeneca. On the 24th, both parties announced their decision to expand the scope of their existing partnership, aiming to optimize key properties of biologics, such as affinity and selectivity, through Schrödinger’s Free Energy Perturbation (FEP) technology, thereby accelerating the development of antibody and protein therapy candidates.

Schrödinger’s computational platform integrates physics-based highly predictive methods with next-generation machine learning technologies to assist pharmaceutical companies in accelerating drug design and innovation. While traditional drug development can synthesize only about 1,000 candidate compounds per year, the Schrödinger computational platform can evaluate billions of compounds within a week, comprehensively assessing and optimizing their selection prior to synthesis and testing. The most promising compounds identified in each round of experiments undergo further optimization through iterative computational analysis. Undoubtedly, this platform delivers higher-quality compounds at greater speed and lower cost. The platform employs diverse optimization strategies, including de novo design leveraging retrosynthetic analysis, virtual screening, and simulation of ligand-protein interaction modes.

Drug Discovery Workflow on the Schrödinger Computing Platform (Image source: Schrödinger official website)

“Our collaboration with AstraZeneca will be further expanded to extend physics-based computational models into the design of antibody and protein therapeutics, thereby transforming biologics development,” said Dr. Robert Abel, Executive Vice President at Schrödinger. “This is an exciting partnership. We remain committed to drug discovery and strive to broaden our development platform.”

“The purpose of this collaboration is to develop biologics with higher affinity, better stability, and greater efficacy,” said Tristan Vaughan, Vice President of Antibody Discovery and Protein Engineering in R&D at AstraZeneca. “We must optimize traditional protein drug design to rapidly advance high-quality novel biologics into clinical development.”

Just last month, Schrödinger raised over $200 million through its IPO, approximately 33% higher than expected. The expanded collaboration announced on the 24th is hoped to further drive the development of new drugs, benefiting patients worldwide.

References:

[1] Schrödinger Announces Expanded Collaboration with AstraZeneca to Extend Computational Modeling Solutions to Biologics, Retrieved Mar 23, 2020, from https://ir.schrodinger.com/news-releases/news-release-details/schrodinger-announces-expanded-collaboration-astrazeneca-extend

Original Title: Billions of Compounds Can Be Evaluated Within a Week; AstraZeneca and Schrödinger Expand Partnership