University of Oxford’s Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology Partners with Absci to Accelerate AI-Driven Immunotherapies

VANCOUVER, Wash. and OXFORD, UK, May 11, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Absci Corporation (Nasdaq: ABSI), a generative AI drug creation company, and the University of Oxford’s Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology, a biomedical research center developing new therapies for chronic inflammatory and musculoskeletal conditions, today announced a partnership to create breakthrough therapies for immune-mediated diseases.

It takes an average of ten years and costs more than $1 billion to bring a new drug to market. This partnership will leverage Absci’s Integrated Drug Creation™ platform, with its unique combination of generative AI and synthetic biology capabilities, and The Kennedy Institute’s leading clinical immunology datasets to identify antibodies to immune-mediated inflammatory diseases and autoimmune conditions with a higher probability of clinical success at unprecedented speeds.

Absci will use generative AI models with The Kennedy Institute’s genomics datasets to identify novel antibodies from patients with exceptional immune responses to inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), including Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. Then, using its reverse immunology approach, Absci will computationally re-assemble antigen-antibody pairs as promising potential starting points for drug development.

“The Kennedy Institute’s vast, high-quality biorepository data expands Absci’s strategic R&D portfolio and aims to unlock major advances for a range of immune-mediated conditions that millions suffer from,” said Sean McClain, Founder and CEO of Absci. “Together with our established data partnerships with St. John’s Cancer Institute and Aster Insights, this partnership gives Absci a robust data pipeline that enables our AI platform across a wide range of therapeutic areas as we build our internal therapeutic pipeline.”

“Absci’s reverse immunology approach promises to turn clinical data into pharmaceutical drugs,” said Christopher Buckley, Director of Clinical Research at The Kennedy Institute. “We are excited about the potential for generative AI to accelerate the discovery of promising drug candidates and better understand their potential efficacy and safety profiles. This partnership will help accelerate our findings in the clinic into new immunotherapies for patients.”

The Kennedy Institute is a pioneer in autoimmunity and one of the first to show how suppressing tumor necrosis factor (TNF) could reduce harmful inflammatory processes in various diseases. Today, some best-selling drugs (e.g., adalimumab) are based on this innovative therapeutic approach. Absci and The Kennedy Institute will work together to accelerate the discovery and development of other promising drug targets and therapies.

About Absci
Absci is a generative AI drug creation company that combines AI with scalable wet lab technologies to create better biologics for patients, faster. Our Integrated Drug Creation™ platform unlocks the potential to accelerate time to clinic and increase the probability of success by simultaneously optimizing multiple drug characteristics important to both development and therapeutic benefit. With the data to train, the AI to create, and the wet lab to validate, Absci can screen billions of cells per week, allowing it to go from AI-designed antibodies to wet lab-validated candidates in as little as six weeks. Absci’s vision is to deliver breakthrough therapeutics at the click of a button, for everyone. Absci's headquarters is in Vancouver, WA, its AI Research Lab is in New York City, and its Innovation Center is in Zug, Switzerland. Visit www.absci.com and follow us on LinkedIn (@absci), Twitter (@Abscibio), and YouTube.

About The Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology

The Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology is a biomedical research center focused in the areas of rheumatology, inflammation, immunology and tissue biology. The Institute is part of the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences (NDORMS), a multi-disciplinary department focusing on discovering the causes of musculoskeletal and inflammatory conditions to deliver excellent and innovative care that improves people’s quality of life.

Research at the Institute is supported by a suite of platforms, as well as through strategic partnerships with other basic and clinical research centers within the University of Oxford and Oxford University Hospitals, across the UK and internationally. Scientific platforms provide access to state-of-the-art technologies including the Oxford-Zeiss Centre for Excellence and other advanced microscopy and imaging facilities, mass and flow cytometry, as well as capabilities for microbial genomics and functional microbiome studies made available through the Oxford Centre for Microbiome Studies.

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