SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Numerate, Inc., a data-driven drug design company applying artificial intelligence (AI) to transform drug discovery, announced a multi-target research collaboration with Lundbeck Pharmaceutical to identify clinical candidates for the treatment of disorders in the central nervous system, including depression, psychosis, seizure and neurodegenerative disorders.
“This is a drug discovery partnership that combines Lundbeck’s deep understanding of drug discovery and development for neurological disorders with Numerate’s proprietary D4 drug discovery platform to attack the many challenges with generating valuable first-in-class assets in this area,” said Guido Lanza, President and CEO of Numerate. “Utilizing data from Lundbeck combined with our internal modeling capabilities, we expect to produce multiple clinical candidates, while also continuing to refine, validate and expand our proprietary AI-driven platform.”
Lanza added: “Importantly, neurology is an area where the ability to solve for the multiple, often competing objectives of activity, ADME (absorption, distribution, metabolism and excretion) and toxicity, is critical from the very beginning of a program. This multi-objective optimization of many causes of drug success and failure is the real power of applying AI to discovery. Specifically, our approach has allowed us to make significant breakthroughs in the prediction of ADME and toxicity. This creates a unique position for us to attack tough targets in the central nervous system (CNS) space when we combine it with our ability to model the real biology – the phenotype or functional effect of interest.”
“We believe the AI-platform Numerate has developed will help overcome current drug design challenges to identify chemistries for 'undruggable' targets that Lundbeck can develop into breakthrough medicines for patients with psychiatric and neurological disorders,” said Klaus Bæk Simonsen, VP Molecular Discovery and Innovation of Lundbeck.
Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but include a combination of upfront, R&D support as well as milestone payments and royalties that reflect the value of the clinical candidates being delivered.
About Numerate
Numerate is a privately-held computational drug design company that is transforming the discovery of new medicines that fill significant therapeutic gaps by harnessing the vast computational power of the cloud and the ever-increasing amounts of drug discovery data by applying proprietary artificial intelligence algorithms. Numerate’s drug design platform combines advances in computer science and statistics with traditional medicinal chemistry approaches to overcome major challenges in small molecule drug discovery and significantly accelerate candidate selection and optimization. Using this platform, coupled with innovative funding and partnership models, Numerate is developing a therapeutic pipeline focused on producing first-in-class candidates against emerging targets addressing major unmet medical needs in cardiovascular, metabolic and neurodegenerative disease. For more information, visit www.numerate.com.
About H. Lundbeck A/S
H. Lundbeck A/S (LUN.CO, LUN DC, HLUYY) is a global pharmaceutical company specialized in psychiatric and neurological disorders. For more than 70 years, we have been at the forefront of research within neuroscience. Our key areas of focus are Alzheimer's disease, depression, Parkinson's disease and schizophrenia. Our approximately 5,000 employees in 55 countries are engaged in the entire value chain throughout research, development, manufacturing, marketing and sales. Our pipeline consists of several late-stage development programs and our products are available in more than 100 countries. We have production facilities in Denmark, France and Italy. Lundbeck generated revenue of DKK 17.2 billion in 2017 (EUR 2.3 billion; USD 2.6 billion). For additional information, visit www.lundbeck.com and connect on Twitter at @Lundbeck.
