Iktos Announces Collaboration with Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, for Use of Iktos AI Technology across Three Drug Discovery Projects

March 14, 2019 Off By BusinessWire

Iktos’ generative modelling AI technology enables rapid and
cost-effective design of novel drugs
Collaboration agreement enables Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany
access to Iktos AI technology across three drug discovery projects
Agreement is part of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany’s R&D strategy
to advance drug discovery with strategic technology-focused
collaborations

PARIS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Iktos, a company specialized in Artificial Intelligence for new drug
design, today announced a collaboration agreement with Merck KGaA,
Darmstadt, Germany, a leading science and technology company, where
Iktos generative modelling artificial intelligence (AI) technology will
be used to facilitate the rapid and cost-effective discovery and design
of promising new compounds for Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany.

Iktos’ AI technology, based on deep generative models, helps bring speed
and efficiency to the drug discovery process, by automatically designing
virtual novel molecules that have desired activities for treating a
given disease. This tackles one of the key challenges in drug design:
rapid identification of molecules which simultaneously satisfy multiple
bioactivity and drug-like criteria for clinical testing. The generative
modelling technology is already successfully established in other
fields, such as image processing and automatic translation, but has only
recently been applied to chemistry.

“This agreement is another illustration of how we aim to enrich our
discovery engine with strategic technology-focused collaborations,” said
Belén Garijo, Member of the Executive Board and CEO Healthcare, Merck
KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. “Artificial intelligence is emerging as a
pillar in the biopharmaceutical R&D model, giving us exponential
opportunity to complement our existing expertise with further speed and
better precision. For patients, this could mean faster access to novel
treatment options.”

“We are thrilled that Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, is collaborating
with Iktos to further accelerate its drug discovery capabilities”
commented Yann Gaston-Mathé, President and CEO of Iktos. “In a short
space of time, our technology has successfully enabled huge progress and
we are eager to apply the enormous possibilities it holds to help Merck
KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany with the successful design of new therapeutic
options.”

Iktos has recently announced collaborations with several
biopharmaceutical companies where Iktos AI technology is used to
accelerate the design of promising compounds, and has published, at the
EFMC 2018 meeting, an experimental validation of the technology in a
real-life drug discovery project. Iktos is planning to release its SaaS
software, Makya™, as a beta-test version available for testing by
customers, by H1 2019.

About Iktos

Incorporated in October 2016, Iktos is a French start-up company
specialized in the development of artificial intelligence solutions
applied to chemical research, more specifically medicinal chemistry and
new drug design. Iktos is developing a proprietary and innovative
solution based on deep learning generative models, which enables, using
existing data, to design molecules that are optimized in silico to meet
all the success criteria of a small molecule discovery project. The use
of Iktos technology enables major productivity gains in upstream
pharmaceutical R&D. Iktos offers its technology both as professional
services and as a SaaS software platform, Makya™.

More information on: www.iktos.ai