by Thomas Meek at Digi-Tech Pharma
LONDON, 4 May (APM) - Artificial intelligence is helping Sanofi develop drugs that can hit two targets, opening the door to therapies against multiple conditions, a senior scientist at the company has said.
This technology could drastically shorten the R&D process for drugs, reduce expenses and open up new commercial opportunities, said Peter Hamley, who is global head, external innovation, drug discovery platforms at the French pharma.
Sanofi put its money where its mouth is by signing a €250 million deal with Scottish AI firm Exscientia a year ago to develop 'bispecific small molecules' - small molecules that are designed to be compatible with two distinct drug targets. (APMMA 52985)
“The idea of this is to take all this big data and automatically generate new structures and predictive bioactivity that hits not one target but two,” said Hamley, who was speaking at the Digi-Tech Pharma conference in London on Wednesday.
He said that the typical R&D process for drugs currently involves designing molecules to hit a single target, as it is too difficult to hit multiple targets.
“Sometimes we get it serendipitously. We know a lot of drugs on the market that hit many more than one target, but that’s by accident not by design.”
The capability of AI to assess thousands of potential variables in a short space of time can allow companies to intentionally go down this route, however, as seen in Sanofi’s work with Exscientia.
The collaboration is looking in particular at developing drugs that can target diabetes as well as one of the other conditions associated with the disease.
“In diabetes it is no longer competitive to just come up with a therapy that influences insulin secretion and absorption. Diabetes itself is a disease with huge comorbidities. So what we would like to do is design a molecule that controls insulin but can also have a positive effect on some of the other issues.
“So for example NASH, which is a big area at the moment, weight management, cardiovascular endpoints etc.”
As part of this process the companies are looking at molecules that can potentially target both DPP4 - a known target for diabetes drugs - and PDE4, which has been a target for asthma treatments and has shown an ability to reduce glucose and weight in respiratory patients with diabetes.
“So what we are trying to do here is combine both targets in one molecule. And indeed Exscientia has been successful with that,” said Hamley.
Presenting the design of the molecule the companies have come up with, he said: “So the lead molecule here really only took about 20 molecules to make. Usually it takes thousands to get to this stage. It's extremely potent against DPP4. It’s not quite as potent against PDE4, but we think that’s therapeutically relevant.”
Sanofi and Exscientia are assessing this molecule further to see if can be taken to the next stage of development.
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