Atomwise is a health tech company focused on using AI for the drug discovery process. They have developed a platform called AtomNet® that uses AI to analyze molecular structures. It is in fact a deep neural network designed to predict the bioactivity of small molecules. This platform can speed up the process of drug discovery which usually takes multiple years & significant financial costs by predicting the interaction between compounds and their biological targets.
Abraham Heifets, Atomwise’s CEO and Co-Founder, has said that, “Our mission is to leverage the power of AI to find solutions where traditional methods have not succeeded, opening up new possibilities in the realm of medicine.”
According to Gavin Hirst, Chief Scientific Officer of this company, “The ability of AtomNet to consistently identify novel bioactive chemical compounds solves a fundamental challenge and inefficiency with current small molecule drug discovery.”
As said before, traditionally thousands of compounds needed to be tested during drug screening to determine their efficacy. But this platform speeds up this process by using AI to predict the outcomes of these interactions before they are physically tested.
According to Izhar Wallach, CTO and Co-Founder, “The AtomNet® platform represents a paradigm shift in how we approach drug discovery. By integrating AI deeply into the process, we’re able to explore chemical spaces and biological interactions that were previously beyond our reach.”
A pipeline is being built of multiple drug candidates, one of them a Tyrosine Kinase 2 (TYK2) inhibitor is in the IND-Enabling Stage, and another one, a Receptor-Interacting Protein Kinase 2 (RIPK2) is in the Optimization phase, while multiple others are in the discovery phase.
A landmark study published in Nature Scientific Reports used AtomNet to identify structurally novel compounds across various therapeutic targets. The study involved the virtual screening of 318 targets in collaboration with over 250 academic labs across 30 countries. AtomNet was able to successfully identify structurally novel hits for 235 out of 318 targets tested.
Atomwise has collaborations with major pharmaceutical companies like Sanofi, GC Pharma, and Hanso for the discovery and development of drugs.