Iktos Announces Collaboration With Galapagos in AI For Drug Design

Iktos, a company specialized in Artificial Intelligence for new drug design, announced a collaboration with Galapagos, a leading global biopharmaceutical company focused on the discovery, development and commercialization of innovative medicines, to apply Iktos’s generative modelling artificial intelligence (AI) technology in one of Galapagos drug discovery programs. Under the agreement, Iktos will apply its de novo ligand and structure-based generative modelling technologies and software Makya™, its AI-based retrosynthesis analysis and planning tool Spaya™, and its know-how in computational drug design to expedite the identification of potential pre-clinical candidates and to identify additional novel chemical matter with suitable properties. Galapagos scientists will benefit from direct access to Makya™ and Spaya™ as part of the collaboration.

Iktos’s AI technology, based on deep generative models, helps to bring new insights and directions into the drug discovery process based on a comprehensive data-driven chemical structure generation technology. This technology automatically designs virtual novel molecules with all of the characteristics of a successful drug molecule. This approach, validated through multiple collaborations, is a novel solution to one of the key challenges in drug design: rapid identification of molecules that simultaneously satisfy multiple parameters, such as potency, selectivity, safety, and project-specific properties. This approach uniquely enables the exploration of chemical space and produces innovative molecule designs with greater freedom to operate. Iktos has also diversified its R&D efforts into the development of an AI technology for retrosynthesis and has developed the AI-based retrosynthesis analysis and planning tool Spaya™ enabling systematic exploration and prioritisation of synthetic routes for a desired compound in minutes.

“We are thrilled and proud to join forces with Galapagos with the aim to discover optimised lead compounds for one of Galapagos undisclosed small molecule drug discovery projects. Pleased to have earned Galapagos trust, we are confident that together with Galapagos established R&D team, we will be able to identify promising novel chemical matter and solve complex multiparametric optimisation problems. The insights and feedback from Galapagos research team will be highly valuable to guide us into improving our technology and products.”