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Strategic Partnership Aims to Create Novel Drug Discovery Pipeline for Unmet Medical Needs by Combining PPI Control Technology with AI Drug Discovery Platform
TOKYO, April 14, 2025 /PRNewswire/ — PRISM BioLab, Co. Ltd. (“PRISM BioLab”), a leading discovery and development biotechnology company designing small molecule inhibitors of protein-protein interaction (PPI) targets, today announced that it has entered into a drug discovery collaboration with Elix, Inc. (“Elix”), effective April 1, 2025.
This partnership will accelerate research on these challenging molecular targets by combining PRISM BioLab’s proprietary peptide mimetic technology for controlling protein-protein interactions with Elix’s cutting-edge AI drug discovery platform.
In drug discovery, generating a clinical candidate molecule typically takes long time and requires synthesis of hundreds to thousands of compounds, making research and development efficiency a critical challenge. Through this partnership, PRISM BioLab’s proprietary small molecule peptide-mimetic PepMetics® technology will be integrated with Elix’s AI drug discovery platform “Elix Discovery™.” This collaboration will expand the AI search range to include previously unconsidered small molecules, enabling efficient identification of promising compounds for traditionally difficult targets and accelerating the creation of breakthrough drug candidates. By leveraging both companies’ AI capabilities and medicinal chemistry expertise, the partnership aims to reduce time and costs and improve success rate of drug discovery, ultimately delivering innovative treatments for unmet medical needs.
Comments from Executives
Elix co-founder and CEO Shinya Yuki, Ph.D.:
In our previous pilot project with PRISM BioLab, we achieved breakthrough results by creating novel compound candidates with an efficiency that would be unimaginable using conventional approaches. This success clearly demonstrated that the combination of our companies’ technologies and expertise holds tremendous potential in drug discovery. I am genuinely looking forward to this business partnership, where we can leverage our complementary strengths to pursue outcomes that neither company could achieve alone.
PRISM BioLab CEO Dai Takehara:
As we challenge ourselves to ‘create new areas of drug discovery’ with peptide-mimetic small molecules, AI utilization is essential. We expect our efforts to be significantly accelerated through collaboration with Elix, whose mission is to ‘rethink drug discovery.’ Our pilot project has already demonstrated the synergistic effect of our technologies and team collaboration, and we will continue to pursue the early creation of groundbreaking new drugs together.
PRISM BioLab CTO Tatsuya Toma Ph.D.:
Improving drug discovery efficiency is an eternal challenge. Delivering better medicines to patients and healthcare professionals as quickly as possible requires innovation. Our PepMetics® technology has characteristics that are highly compatible with AI applications. Elix is not only a professional in AI and machine learning but also expanding their knowledge and understanding of drug discovery while maintaining a flexible corporate culture. They have shown great interest in PepMetics® features, and I believe we can advance comprehensive drug discovery research together, leveraging PepMetics® characteristics to accelerate the process.
About Elix
Elix is an AI drug discovery company with the mission of “Rethinking drug discovery”. Through their flagship software platform, Elix Discovery™, and collaborative consulting engagements, they work with leading pharmaceutical companies and biotech startups to reduce the enormous costs and time associated with drug discovery, while improving the rate of successful outcomes. They achieve these goals via their company’s unique blend of AI engineering and medicinal chemistry expertise that allows them to stay at the forefront of development in both fields, and offer the solutions of tomorrow to the problems of today.
About PRISM BioLab
PRISM BioLab is a discovery and development biotechnology company utilizing proprietary PepMetics® technology to discover orally available small molecule inhibitors of protein-protein interaction (PPI) targets and transform lives of patients suffering from cancer, autoimmune, fibrosis and other diseases. PepMetics® are a unique class of small molecules that mimic three-dimensional structures of alpha-helix and beta-turn, the peptide structures commonly found in intracellular PPI interphases and receptor-ligand interactions. By combining proprietary chemistry, know-how around PPI targets and AI-supported design, PepMetics® technology can deliver inhibitors of challenging PPI targets. The technology holds promise to expand the field of drug discovery by turning previously undruggable PPIs into targets readily druggable with small molecules and by generating oral small molecule alternatives for injectable biologics.
PRISM BioLab is collaborating on new PPI targets with global and Japanese pharmaceutical companies. PepMetics® targeting CBP/beta-catenin PPIs licensed to Eisai Co., Ltd. and Ohara Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. are in clinical development for cancer and liver disease, respectively.
