PRISM BioLab and Elix Partner to Advance AI-Driven Drug Discovery
TOKYO , JAPAN, 14TH APRIL, 2025 – PRISM BioLab Co., Ltd., a biotech leader in small-molecule PPI inhibitors, has entered into a strategic collaboration with Elix, Inc., an AI-driven pharmaceutical innovator, for drug discovery.
This partnership, which comes into force on April 1, 2025, will hasten the discovery of novel therapeutics against hard disease targets using advanced AI technology and proprietary chemistry.
Elix Discovery™ will be joined with PRISM BioLab’s PepMetics®, which is a peptide-mimetic platform able to mimic 3D protein structures.
The idea behind this is to lower the usually very high costs and long time frames for identifying clinical drug candidates, particularly for protein-protein interaction (PPI) targets that are considered ‘undruggable’ through conventional means.
“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 CEO Dai Takehara said.
Elix CEO Shinya Yuki commented,
“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.”
The intended partnership aims to expand chemical search space, increase compound efficacy, and boost hit rate in drug discovery. PRISM BioLab CTO Tatsuya Toma pointed to PepMetics® as an ideal method for integration with artificial intelligence and applauded the flexibility and innovation-oriented culture of Elix.
PRISM BioLab CTO Tatsuya Toma Ph.D. elaborated,
“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.”
Together the companies aim to push the pharmaceutical R&D envelope to deliver swifter and smarter treatments for the worst diseases: cancer, fibrosis, and autoimmune disorders.
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