Breakthrough in drug discovery

Sil­i­con Val­ley-based drug devel­op­ment com­pa­ny Verseon now sees itself at just that point, hav­ing devel­oped its own AI and physics-dri­ven tech­nol­o­gy plat­form to devel­op new drugs atom by atom. Verseon’s chief tech­nol­o­gy offi­cer, Sang­tae Kim, a mem­ber of the U.S. Nation­al Acad­e­my of Engi­neer­ing, says the plat­form is far more sophis­ti­cat­ed than oth­er drug devel­op­ers’ “AI sys­tems” because it enables Verseon to design entire­ly new chem­i­cal struc­tures need­ed to fight cur­rent­ly incur­able diseases.

He points out that AI is only as effec­tive as the data it can learn from, as evi­denced by the prob­lems in devel­op­ing “self-dri­ving” vehi­cles. As high­light­ed in recent Impact Wealth Mag­a­zine cov­er­age, Verseon has bro­ken free from this con­ven­tion­al approach and is bring­ing much-need­ed new treat­ments for can­cer, heart dis­ease and oth­er dead­ly dis­eases to mar­ket. The com­pa­ny is also devel­op­ing prod­ucts that slow human aging and increase longevity.

Many mar­ket observers now believe that despite its $1 tril­lion a year in patent-pro­tect­ed rev­enues, the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try, with its error-prone tri­al-and-error approach to drug devel­op­ment, is a grow­ing obsta­cle to the devel­op­ment of much-need­ed ther­a­pies. Verseon’s founders rec­og­nized that the sys­tem­at­ic devel­op­ment of entire­ly new drugs would require break­throughs in mol­e­c­u­lar physics mod­el­ing to deter­mine how a new chem­i­cal struc­ture binds to a dis­ease-caus­ing protein.

Using its plat­form, the com­pa­ny has iden­ti­fied mul­ti­ple new clin­i­cal can­di­dates for each of its pro­grams — a feat unprece­dent­ed in the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal indus­try. The man­age­ment team holds over 200 patents in total and is no stranger to break­throughs. Co-founders Adi­tyo Prakash and Eniko Fodor have patent­ed tech­nolo­gies now owned by Intel that enable all video stream­ing from Ama­zon Prime to Zoom. Verseon’s third founder, David Kita, devel­oped one of the first bioin­for­mat­ics plat­forms that sparked the genomics revolution.

And Sang­tae Kim — a for­mer vice pres­i­dent at major phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­ny Eli Lil­ly and chair­man of Pur­due’s Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing Divi­sion — is now dri­ving fur­ther improve­ments to the pow­er­ful AI and pro­pri­etary datasets.

“The plat­form includes sig­nif­i­cant new advances in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent branch­es of sci­ence. Each of these advances would be greet­ed with enthu­si­asm by lead­ing pro­fes­sion­als in their respec­tive fields, but tak­en as a whole, it is vir­tu­al­ly unat­tain­able by any oth­er com­pa­ny. It is by far the most advanced ab ini­tio method of drug devel­op­ment cur­rent­ly available.”

- Sang­tae Kim

Verseon is cur­rent­ly test­ing drugs with remark­ably low bleed­ing risk to treat and pre­vent heart attacks and strokes in more than 400 mil­lion patients world­wide. Uncon­trolled bleed­ing is the biggest risk fac­tor asso­ci­at­ed with cur­rent alter­na­tives. One of the world’s lead­ing car­di­ol­o­gists, John Dean­field, pro­fes­sor of car­di­ol­o­gy at Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don, com­ment­ed, “Platelet-spar­ing anti­co­ag­u­lants … rep­re­sent an excit­ing oppor­tu­ni­ty in ‘pre­ci­sion med­i­cine’ for the treat­ment of a large group of patients with car­dio­vas­cu­lar disease.”

The com­pa­ny is also devel­op­ing oral med­i­cines to treat dia­bet­ic vision loss in more than 154 mil­lion patients, treat­ments for coro­n­avirus and influen­za, and three dif­fer­ent pro­grams to fight can­cer — one of the world’s biggest killers. All of these prod­ucts are part of a rapid­ly grow­ing drug pipeline with 16 drug can­di­dates in eight pro­grams. Robert Karr, Pfiz­er’s for­mer SVP of R&D Strat­e­gy, com­ment­ed, “This plat­form final­ly ush­ers in the era of sys­tem­at­ic drug discovery.”