Exscientia is a pharmaceutical technology company pioneering the use of AI and machine learning to accelerate drug discovery and design.
Exscientia, now part of Recursion, is a company focused on leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) for the development of medicines. Their primary aim is to create effective drugs more efficiently by using AI technologies in every stage of drug development, from target identification to drug design and clinical trials. Below are significant aspects of their operations based on their detailed company-authored content:
Patient-First AI: The company emphasizes a patient-first approach by using real patient tissue and engineered AI platforms to enhance target selection, drug design, experimentation, and clinical assessment.
Precision Target: In the initial drug discovery phase, selecting the correct targets is seen as fundamental. The company applies machine learning models to genetic data to identify promising disease-target associations and ensure that the targets are "druggable" with small molecules.
Precision Design: This involves using AI to streamline the molecular design process, focusing on creating balanced molecules that fulfill various clinical requirements efficiently. This process integrates generative design and active learning to enhance drug discovery outcomes.
Precision Experiment: To refine AI models and verify therapeutic profiles, the company maintains advanced laboratories with cutting-edge technologies such as surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and x-ray crystallography, offering a feedback loop between experiments and AI predictions.
Precision Medicine: The company's approach in oncology involves directly testing on live patient tissues, analyzing data at the single cell level. Notably, the EXALT-1 clinical study proved that functional precision oncology can prospectively improve patient outcomes.
Clinical Trials: The pipeline includes various stages of drug discovery, such as Phase 1/2 trials for several conditions, including solid tumors and inflammatory diseases. For example, a CDK7 inhibitor for solid tumors and a PKC-theta inhibitor for inflammatory diseases are in the clinical trial phase.
Partnerships: They hold both wholly owned and milestone-based partnerships to expand their drug discovery efforts into more therapeutic areas beyond oncology.
Overall, Exscientia (Recursion) represents an integration of precision, technology, and patient-centric focus in drug discovery. This approach aims to accelerate the creation of efficacious and safe medicinal solutions.