Exscientia and Blue Oak Pharmaceuticals Announce Collaboration to Rapidly Discover Innovative Treatments for CNS Disorders - BiopharmaDirect

Exscientia and Blue Oak Pharmaceuticals Announce Collaboration to Rapidly Discover Innovative Treatments for CNS Disorders

October 14, 2020

Blue Oak Pharmaceuticals, an innovator in the discovery of transformative CNS drugs, and Exscientia, a clinical-stage Artificial Intelligence (AI) drug-discovery company, announced today an innovative drug-discovery collaboration to treat brain disorders.

This collaboration combines Blue Oak's therapeutic area expertise and ability to design novel, CNS focused privileged chemotypes with Exscientia's proven ability to apply AI technologies to design dual targeted (bispecific) small molecules. Timing for this collaboration is prescient. The recent validation of new pharmacological targets for brain disorders, the first in decades, provides an historic opportunity to develop new superior classes of therapeutics to treat patients and help families of those suffering from brain disorders.

Exscientia's CEO Andrew Hopkins said, "Exscientia's mission is to make safer, more effective drugs available to all - more quickly and efficiently through AI drug discovery platform. It is thrilling to work with the founders of Blue Oak Pharmaceuticals, who were previously key drivers in the discovery of new classes of neuropsychiatric drugs that have recently achieved breakthrough status at the FDA. By combining Blue Oak’s therapeutic area expertise with our unique proven AI technologies, we intend to make rapid inroads to develop innovative medicines".

This announcement follows earlier news this year where Exscientia announced the first AI designed molecule to enter clinical trials. Expanding on this new relationship, Thomas Large, CEO of Blue Oak drew attention to this synergy of the partners. "We've known the strengths of the Exscientia AI platform for some time, especially the ability to evolve very small molecules that can selectively interact with more than one target. With Blue Oak's deep knowledge of complex neuropsychiatric illness, we will be able to look at carefully chosen target combinations that can bring major benefit to psychiatric patients".

About Exscientia
Exscientia is a global Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company and the first to have novel chemical molecules assessed in a clinical setting. Fusing the power of the original AI-design with the experience of seasoned drug hunters, Exscientia's Centaur Chemist^TM platform enables the discovery of exquisitely optimised molecules with breakthrough productivity. In tandem, Exscientia's Centaur Biologist^TM platform drives the flexible analysis and prioritisation of discovery targets across all pharmaceutically relevant disease space.

About Blue Oak Pharmaceuticals
Blue Oak is discovering and developing new classes of therapeutics for brain disorders using a systems neurobiology strategy that designs novel privileged chemotypes to dysregulated target brain circuitry and behavior. First-in-class drugs with new mechanisms-of-action are in late discovery phase for large unmet medical needs in bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and treatment resistant depression. Additionally, these compounds have the potential to uncover novel therapeutic targets and pathways for subsequent best-in-class drug discovery programs.

Source: www.exscientia.ai