According to the terms of the deal, Gilead will select a set of drug targets and Terray will discover and develop small molecule drugs that bind to them. Gilead has the option to exclusively license compounds in the deal and take on their development and commercialization. In return, Terray will receive an undisclosed upfront payment and milestone payments linked to preclinical, clinical, and sales milestones as well as tiered royalties.
With an almost infinite amount of small molecules that can be made, traditional drug discovery requires labor-intensive and lengthy experiments to unearth promising new compounds. To tackle this challenge, AI is generating excitement in the space for its capacity to more quickly predict how drug molecules might behave, forming the basis of a market set to grow by 12.2% per year to almost $8 billion by 2030.
Powering up drug discovery
Terray was launched as an AI-focused drug discovery player in 2018, bagging $60 million in a Series A round led by Madrona Venture Group. The company then raised $120 million in a Series B round earlier this year led by Bedford Ridge Capital and NVIDIA’s venture capital arm NVentures.
Terray’s tNova platform is designed to power up drug discovery by blending generative AI and lab experiments. It first uses AI to screen a database of billions of drug binding measurements, and measures how new molecules behave against a disease target, with the capacity to screen 2million candidates in minutes. It then feeds the screening data into machine learning models to produce more targeted molecules for additional screening, before settling on candidates for testing in the lab and clinical trials.
AI-based services increased by a whopping 575% from four in 2015 to 27 in 2020
GlobalData Pharmaceutical Intelligence Center
“Next-generation, AI-driven platforms using custom-generated large, relevant data sets will serve as important tools in our efforts to shape the future of drug discovery in our ongoing pursuit of innovative treatments across our therapeutic areas of focus,” said Flavius Martin, Gilead’s executive vice president of research, in a public statement.
There are many ways that AI can speed up drug development, including predicting how molecules bind to targets and speeding up data analysis. Big pharma companies are piling onto companies offering AI-based services, with partnerships in this space increasing by a whopping 575% from four in 2015 to 27 in 2020. One recent example is Sanofi’s team-up with ChatGPT developer OpenAI and the drug developer Formation Bio to build up their drug discovery muscle.
