GSK following the trend of major pharmaceuticals is investing in AI to automate drug design in an attempt to reduce discovery and trial times.
"Novel compounds prioritised for synthesis by Exscientia''s AI systems simultaneously balance potency, selectivity and pharmacokinetic criteria in order to deliver successful experimental outcomes. By applying a rapid design-make-test cycle, the Exscientia AI system actively learns from the preceding experimental results and rapidly evolves compounds towards the desired candidate criteria. During this collaboration, Exscientia will apply its AI enabled platform and combine this with the expertise of GSK, in order to discover novel and selective small molecules for up to 10 disease-related targets, nominated by GSK across multiple therapeutic areas. Exscientia will receive research payments from GSK to undertake new discovery programmes with nominated targets with the goal of delivering pre-clinical candidates. In addition to research funding, Exscientia is eligible to receive near-term lead and pre-clinical candidate milestones if all objectives are achieved."
Expected to significantly reduce lead time in research