AION Labs, an innovation lab spearheading the adoption of AI technologies and computational science to solve therapeutic challenges, has announced the formation of DenovAI, the lab's second startup approved by the Israel Innovation Authority.
The new company will develop an AI-powered biophysics solution that can discover potential antibodies completely de novo (from scratch), and then suggest candidates likely to make effective drugs.
DenovAI aims to build a next-generation computational platform for the de novo design of strongly binding antibodies directed towards epitopes of choice. In addition to funding, support and mentorship, AION Labs and its pharma partners will provide DenovAI with pharmaceutical data for model training and advanced machine learning development.
DenovAI aims to build on recent advances in protein structure prediction, AI algorithms, computational molecular biophysics techniques and increased availability of experimentally determined antigen-antibody structures to create a new paradigm for AI-driven antibody discovery.
"We are developing an end-to-end AI framework that can predict antibody sequences and structures that bind with high affinity and selectivity to any given epitope. And with unlimited coverage of sequence space. This has never been done before," said Dr. Kashif Sadiq, founder and CEO of DenovAI in a news release. "We have seen major advances in the field of therapeutic antibodies, but the process of developing new drugs is incredibly slow, vastly expensive, and inefficient. With the support of AION Labs and its partners, we hope to develop a cutting-edge solution that will disrupt the whole field, cutting discovery timelines from months to days. And which could dramatically broaden the scope of antibody therapy to many more diseases."
DenovAI is the second startup to be formed by AION Labs, which creates early-stage startup teams that harness the power of artificial intelligence to transform the process of drug discovery and development for the betterment of human health.
The new company has been created through the investment of leading pharmaceutical companies Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Merck, and Teva and with close support from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and additional financial backing from the Israel Innovation Authority and the Israel Biotech Fund.
In September 2022, AION Labs announced the formation of its first start-up, OMEC.AI, which will develop AI-powered solutions to analyze pre-clinical data and identify gaps in efficacy and safety to improve the probability of success of drug candidates in clinical trials.
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