Elix, Inc. (CEO: Shinya Yuki / HQ: Tokyo, hereinafter “Elix”) and Showa Pharmaceutical University (Chairman: Kazuhiro Watanabe / HQ: Tokyo; hereinafter “SPU”) hereby announces entering into a joint research agreement to advance drug discovery utilizing AI technology.

The application of AI technology in drug discovery research goes beyond improving efficiency, reducing development timelines, and cutting costs. It also opens up new possibilities for addressing drug discovery targets that were previously considered challenging. Furthermore, the awarding of this year’s Nobel Prizes in Physics and Chemistry for advancements in AI technology highlights the remarkable progress in this field. Against this backdrop, AI-driven drug discovery has already become an indispensable tool for many pharmaceutical companies and research institutes.

Elix (https://www.elix-inc.com/) is an AI drug discovery company with the mission of “Rethinking Drug Discovery.” To reduce the cost and time while increasing the success rate of the drug discovery pipeline, Elix is focusing on the use of AI and machine learning in projects aimed at pharmaceutical companies, universities, research institutes, and biotech startups. Elix offers its integrated AI drug discovery platform, Elix Discovery™, designed with the concept of being “MedChems Can Truly Use.” Elix Discovery™ features a suite of model architectures essential for AI-driven drug discovery, as well as an intuitive user interface that enables users to easily build and automatically optimize predictive models. The platform also supports both ligand-based drug design (LBDD) and structure-based drug design (SBDD) via generative AI models that can incorporate docking simulations, pharmacophore modeling, and other relevant techniques. Additionally, Elix provides a robust support system that caters to a wide range of users, from complete beginners to seasoned experts in machine learning and cheminformatics.

The  Laboratory of Drug Design and Medicinal Chemistry at SPU (https://www.shoyaku.ac.jp/en/laboratory/drug_design_and_medicinal_chemistry/) conducts fundamental research on the interactions between proteins and small molecule compounds at the intersection of medicinal chemistry and structural biology. By employing biophysical techniques to analyze the binding modes and dynamic behaviors of proteins and ligands, the laboratory aims to propose novel strategies for drug discovery.

This joint research will be conducted in collaboration with the research group led by Prof. Toshimasa Itoh of the Laboratory of Drug Design and Medicinal Chemistry, which specializes in drug discovery research integrating organic synthetic chemistry, molecular biology, structural biology, and computational chemistry. By combining the expertise and techniques of Prof. Itoh’s laboratory with Elix’s strengths in AI-driven drug discovery technologies, this collaboration aims to objectively acquire novel scaffold ligands for well-known protein targets.

・Comments by Elix CEO Shinya Yuki
We are delighted to collaborate with SPU through this joint research, leveraging Elix’s AI drug discovery technologies to tackle the challenge of identifying novel compounds for previously difficult targets. We aim to work with Prof. Itoh’s laboratory to explore new possibilities in drug discovery that would not be achievable by Elix or SPU alone.

・Comments by Prof. Toshimasa Itoh, Laboratory of Drug Design and Medicinal Chemistry, SPU
Designing pharmaceuticals often requires immense time and effort, with researchers frequently needing to make compromises along the way. Automating drug design through AI has the potential to free up resources for drug discovery chemists, allowing them to focus on generating novel concepts and accelerating the development of groundbreaking medicines. Through this collaboration with Elix, I hope to explore and validate the future of drug discovery research.