Cyclica Launches Ligand DesignTM, a Powerful Multi-Targeted Drug Design Technology at Collision Conference Toronto

TORONTO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–lt;a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/biotechnology?src=hash" target="_blank"gt;#biotechnologylt;/agt;–Cyclica, a leading biotechnology company that commercialized Ligand
Express® announced its novel, first-in-class drug design technology, Ligand
Design^TM on stage at the Collision Conference in
Toronto. This revolutionary platform empowers scientists in the
pharmaceutical industry to generate novel drug-like compounds by
combining powerful methods for molecule generation, ADMET prediction,
and high-throughput ligand-protein interaction prediction.

Classical computational drug design approaches, like virtual screening,
focus on a single protein target. These approaches do not holistically
consider a drug’s polypharmacology, the phenomenon of one drug acting on
multiple proteins in the body, or a drug’s pharmacokinetic properties,
which describes how a drug is absorbed and processed by the body. Unlike
single target approaches, Ligand Design focuses on a drug’s
polypharmacology and explores synthetically accessible chemical space to de
novo design small molecules against a collection of targets and
anti-targets, while simultaneously selecting for physicochemical and
ADMET properties. Ligand Design has the ability to transform research
and discovery processes, and augment the capabilities of scientists to
rapidly design drugs with greater precision and efficacy. The platform
has been used by leading pharmaceutical companies, biotech companies,
and academia globally, and is showing promising results in drug
discovery. To date, several novel agents have been synthesized and
tested successfully for activity in multiple disease areas.

“I believe that the Cyclica team is on the forefront of innovation in
drug discovery. Together with Ligand Express, their new Ligand Design
technology will reshape and enhance how scientists conduct their
research faster and with higher quality,” said John Conway, Adviser at
Cyclica, and Global Head, Data Science and AI IT at AstraZeneca. “At the
end of the day, it’s all about making faster and more informed
decisions, and their drug discovery platform allows scientists to do
just that.”

“Our vision is to reduce the time of drug discovery from 7 years to 2
years, and to get the best molecules in the hands of patients faster. We
believe this can be accomplished by empowering experimental scientists
in pharma with a holistic and integrated in silico workflow that
combines computational biophysics and machine learning,” said Naheed
Kurji, President and CEO at Cyclica. “Together, with Ligand
Design and Ligand Express we will move away from the classical
computational approaches, and accelerate drug discovery by designing
drugs for patients, not proteins.”

Cyclica is a Toronto-based, globally recognized biotechnology company
that leverages artificial intelligence and computational biophysics to
reshape the drug discovery process. Cyclica provides the pharmaceutical
industry with an integrated, holistic, and end-to-end enabling platform
focused on polypharmacology that enhances how scientists design, screen,
and personalize medicines for patients while minimizing off-target side
effects. By doing more with artificial intelligence, Cyclica aims to
revolutionize a system troubled with attrition and costly failures,
accelerate the drug discovery process, and develop medicines with
greater precision.

For more information, please visit https://cyclicarx.com/.

Contacts

Naheed Kurji
President & CEO, Cyclica
[email protected]