Iktos Announces Research Collaboration with Janssen to Utilize Iktos’ Artificial Intelligence Technology to Increase Speed & Efficiency of Small Molecule Drug Discovery

PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Iktos, a company specializing in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies applied to new drug design, announced today the initiation of a collaboration agreement with Janssen Pharmaceutica NV. As part of the collaboration, Iktos virtual drug design technology will be implemented and applied to several Janssen small molecule drug discovery projects. Iktos will collaborate with Janssen to develop new applications, leveraging Iktos’ proprietary know-how in deep generative models applied to chemistry and Janssen expertise in AI-enabled prediction of small molecule activities.

Building on deep generative models, Iktos is developing a proprietary and innovative technology for in silico drug design which has the potential to enable vast improvements in drug discovery workflows, based on its unique capacity to explore chemical space with speed and efficiency, thus enabling identification of molecules that meet the desired criteria in a given research project.

“We are thrilled to be able to announce a strategic collaboration with Janssen, one of the largest pharma companies in the world, and highly respected for the quality of their science and their visionary perspective regarding the use of big data and machine learning to progress pharma R&D efficiency,” commented Yann Gaston-Mathé, CEO of Iktos. “It is a major recognition for Iktos to be selected by Janssen as a partner for implementation and development of generative modeling technology for new drug design. Iktos has been a pioneer in the application of generative models for drug discovery and is emerging as a world leader in a technology that has the potential to disrupt the way new therapeutics are designed.”

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 version available for testing by customers, by mid-2019.

About Iktos

Incorporated in October 2016, Iktos is a French start-up company specializing 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 the use of existing data to design molecules that are optimized in silico to meet 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 to its customers both as professional services and as a SaaS software platform, Makya™.
More information on: www.iktos.ai

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