15 November 2018
Frontier IP Group Plc
("Frontier IP" or the "Group")
Portfolio news - Exscientia acquires Kinetic Discovery to build AI-driven drug discovery capabilities
Frontier IP, a specialist in commercialising university intellectual property, notes today's announcement from Exscientia Limited ("Exscientia" or "the Company") that it has acquired fellow portfolio company Kinetic Discovery Limited ("Kinetic"). The full Exscientia statement is included below.
As at 30 June 2018, the Group held a 4.1 per cent equity stake in Exscientia, a leader in using artificial intelligence ("AI") in drug discovery, and 5 per cent of biophysics specialist Kinetic. Frontier is receiving Exscientia shares for its Kinetic holding. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. It does not affect the current book value of Frontier IP's portfolio.
The acquisition allows Exscientia to create an AI-driven drug discovery company to go rapidly from gene to clinical candidate for any druggable target of choice. It is part of Exscientia's growth strategy to develop a proprietary drug pipeline and to enhance its support of existing and future partnerships. The Company is collaborating with several leading pharmaceutical and life sciences companies, including GSK, Sanofi and Evotec, which invested €15 million in Exscientia in 2017.
Frontier IP Chief Executive Officer Neil Crabb said: "We are delighted with this news from Exscientia. The acquisition adds to the exciting potential of what the Company can achieve in the field of AI-driven drug discovery."
The Exscientia statement in full:
Exscientia Builds "Full Stack" AI-driven Drug Discovery Capabilities through Acquisition of Kinetic Discovery
Exscientia, the company leading the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in drug discovery, announces that is has acquired the biophysics specialists, Kinetic Discovery, a private UK company. The acquisition builds up Exscientia's capabilities for tackling novel drug targets to create first-in-class drug candidates by seeding its algorithms with data generated through the use of fragment screening and structural biology. The addition of Kinetic's complementary expertise enables Exscientia to create a "full stack" AI-driven drug discovery company to go rapidly from gene to clinical candidate for any druggable target of choice. The acquisition of Kinetic is part of Exscientia's growth strategy to develop a proprietary drug pipeline and to enhance its support of existing and future partnerships.
Kinetic Discovery brings specialist protein engineering, biophysical screening and structural biology expertise that is highly synergistic to Exscientia's current drug design, pharmacology and computational science platform. The integration of these capabilities will scale Exscientia's ability to discover new drug molecules for its ambitious portfolio plans.
Dr Andy Bell, Chief Research Officer of Exscientia, said: "Our aim is to revolutionise the drug discovery process through the application of a systematic, AI-driven approach. We see huge synergy in combining Kinetic Discovery's biophysics capabilities with Exscientia's AI drug design platform. We have been working extensively with Kinetic for over two years and our scientists have been incredibly impressed with their ability to rapidly generate high-quality data on a wide range of projects. The evidence we are seeing is that our offering has the potential to radically improve the current drug discovery paradigm."
Kinetic Discovery's operations and employees will relocate from their current facilities at Harwell, Oxfordshire to Exscientia's new state-of-the-art facilities in The Schrödinger Building on the Oxford Science Park. Kinetic's founder and Chief Scientific Officer, Dr Iva Navratilova, will join Exscientia as its Chief Biophysicist. The merging of Kinetic will increase Exscientia's head count to 35 employees, representing 16 different nationalities.
Dr Navratilova added: "We are very excited to join forces with Exscientia and become an integral part of its unique platform. Over the last couple of years working with Exscientia's outstanding team, we have seen the value of an integrated service to the drug discovery process, and we look forward to building on this to create better drugs faster and more cost-effectively."
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ABout EXScIENtiA
Exscientia is at the forefront of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery and design. By fusing the power of AI with the discovery experience of seasoned drug hunters, Exscientia is the first company to automate drug design, surpassing conventional approaches.
Exscientia's innovative platform enables breakthrough productivity gains as well as new approaches to improve drug efficacy. Novel compounds are automatically designed and prioritised for synthesis by its AI systems, which rapidly evolve compounds towards the desired candidate criteria for clinical development.
Exscientia systems learn from both existing data resources and experimental data from each design cycle. The principle is similar to how a human would learn, but the AI process is far more effective at identifying and assimilating multiple subtle and complex trends to balance potency, selectivity and pharmacokinetic criteria. As a result, the AI-driven process is more likely to achieve the end goal and to do this more rapidly and efficiently than traditional human endeavour.
Exscientia is collaborating with several leading pharmaceutical and life sciences companies, including GSK, Sanofi and Evotec.
Exscientia has its headquarters in Oxford, UK with offices in the UK and Japan.
ABOUT FRONTIER IP
Frontier IP unites science and commerce by identifying strong intellectual property and accelerating its development through a range of commercialisation services. A critical part of the Group's work is involving relevant industry partners at an early stage of development to ensure technology meets real world demands and needs.
The Group looks to build and grow a portfolio of equity stakes and licence income by taking an active involvement in spin-out companies, including support for fund raising and collaboration with relevant industry partners at an early stage of development.
