Israeli company ImunaiThe company, which develops AI-based tools to improve the drug discovery process, announced a strategic agreement with pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca. Immunai will receive $18 million from AstraZeneca for the early stages of the study, but the main significance of the deal is not the initial amount, but rather the multi-year relationship between the Israeli company and the Anglo-Swedish company. The fact is that a similar relationship is planned. A link significant enough for pharmaceutical giants – AstraZeneca to report it themselves.
Immunai already has strategic agreements with 30 pharmaceutical companies, most of them for much smaller sums. Immunai had an initial contract with AstraZeneca in 2022, and the current deal extends that agreement.
Immunai has developed a system that models the human body, primarily centered around the immune system. We offer the use of this model to pharmaceutical companies to improve the efficiency of drug development. This allows you to choose from a wide variety of possible molecules, choose the right combination of drugs for testing, choose dosages, etc. “When we started, you could say we were the Google of the immune system,” says Noam Solomon, CEO and co-founder of Immunai. “Today we say we are the ChatGPT of the drug world. Researchers can ask the system a variety of questions about the value of different courses of action, if not in text format. What is ChatGPT? Alternatively, the system can also explain to the researcher, and later ask the regulator why a particular course was chosen.
Solomon said most companies in computational biology are improving the drug discovery stage, which accounts for less than 5% of drug discovery costs. Drug formulation, dosing, clinical trial design and conduct are equally important steps given the risk of failure, and testing is the most expensive part of the process. “In drug development, they talk about Eroom’s Law, the inverse of Moore’s Law in the semiconductor industry. Instead of drug development becoming more efficient, it’s actually becoming less efficient over time. But the drug discovery stage is not the pain point.”We are addressing a real pain point for pharmaceutical companies. ”
Solomon said all projects, including the one covered by the AstraZeneca contract, are improving the system itself. “Today, we invest less in each project and the platforms are more automated. The more data we have, and more precisely, the more clinical samples we generate data from, the more accurate our predictions become. It will be.”
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Immunai has raised $300 million to date, including $215 million in a solo investor round in 2021, which valued the company at more than $1 billion at the time. “Most of the money is still in the bank,” Solomon said. “The majority of our funding comes from contracts with pharmaceutical companies. We currently employ 170 people, a very successful size for a company like ours that wants to remain innovative. Crisis We didn’t have to scale back because of this, which is what the biomedical sector has experienced over the past two years. ”
And how do you see your future?
“In two years, we will reach a situation where we are no longer dependent on funding. I am not saying that we are not already dependent on funding today. That is because we are very ambitious and we We may want to hold another round to take the system and the company to where we dream of it, but we are already investing in certain situations. I’m refusing.
“We don’t know whether in the more distant future we will continue with our business model of developing in partnership with pharmaceutical companies, or whether we will take greater ownership of the final product. For the time being,” we are not thinking about that. are thinking about how to do what they’re doing in the best way possible. ”
“Artificial intelligence is transforming cancer drug discovery and clinical development,” said Iker Huerga, Chief Data Scientist at AstraZeneca. We are excited to strengthen our data-driven R&D strategy and glean potential new insights into mechanisms of action.” It’s immunotherapy. ”
Published by Globes, Israel Business News – en.globes.co.il – on September 26, 2024.
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