News | September 26, 2024

Lundbeck And Iambic Therapeutics Announce Strategic Partnership To Leverage AI For Drug Discovery

Lundbeck partners with Iambic to utilize its AI-powered drug discovery platform to accelerate research and therapeutic innovation for neurological disease

H. Lundbeck A/S (Lundbeck), an innovator within CNS disorders and Iambic Therapeutics, a clinical-stage biotechnology company developing novel therapeutics using its unique AI-driven discovery platform, today announced the companies have entered into a strategic research collaboration to focus on discovery of a small molecule therapeutic for the treatment of migraine.

The agreement includes an upfront payment, performance-based milestones, and royalties.

“Iambic’s state-of-the-art platform - including the NeuralPLexer protein-ligand structure prediction technology - will accelerate the generation of novel candidates with a higher probability of success at reaching our patients,” said Tarek Samad, PhD, Senior Vice President, and Head of Global Research at Lundbeck. “The pace at which Iambic can both design molecules in silico and then test them in the laboratory has the potential to unlock compelling neurology targets that have eluded traditional drug discovery methods.”

“We welcome the opportunity to work with industry leaders at Lundbeck and to demonstrate the potential of the Iambic platform to discover neurological medicines,” said Thomas Miller, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer, and co-founder of Iambic.

Iambic is also developing an internal pipeline of candidates, discovered using its platform that integrates AI models for protein structure prediction and wholistic drug design with high-throughput chemistry and biology experimentation. Iambic’s pipeline currently includes IAM1363, a highly selective, brain penetrant small molecule inhibitor of both wild-type and oncogenic HER2 mutants currently in a Phase 1/1b study, as well as a potential first-in-class selective dual CDK2/4 inhibitor for multiple cancer indications, an allosteric inhibitor for KIF18A, and additional new programs.

This partnership reflects Lundbeck’s strong commitment to innovation across R&D. Merging the power of generative AI with expertise in developing drug candidates for brain diseases aims to significantly enhance the probability of success and reduce discovery timelines for novel therapeutics. The partnership also supports Lundbeck’s strategy of being a focused innovator in brain health.

About Iambic’s AI-Driven Discovery Platform
The Iambic AI-driven platform was created to address the most challenging design problems in drug discovery, leveraging technology innovations such as Iambic NeuralPLexer, which provides state-of-the-art structural predictions of protein-ligand complexes. The integration of physics principles into the platform’s AI architectures improves data efficiency and allows molecular models to venture widely across the space of possible chemical structures. The platform’s algorithms enable identification of new chemical mechanisms for engaging difficult-to-address biological targets, discovery of defined product profiles that optimize therapeutic window, and exploration of the chemical space to discover candidates for development with highly differentiated properties. Through close integration of AI-generated molecular designs with automated experimental execution, Iambic completes design-make-test cycles on a weekly cadence.

Source: H. Lundbeck A/S