Insider Brief
- PostEra, a biotechnology company specializing in AI for preclinical drug discovery, announced a collaboration with Amgen to advance up to 5 small molecule programs using PostEra’s AI platform, Proton, and Amgen’s drug discovery expertise.
- The agreement with Amgen includes upfront funding, milestone payments, and royalties on any approved products, and gives Amgen the option to access some of PostEra’s key AI technologies for its in-house programs.
- Founded in 2019, PostEra’s technology focuses on small molecule drug discovery and has engaged in $1Bn worth of AI partnerships, including leading the COVID Moonshot open-science drug discovery initiative.
PRESS RELEASE — BOSTON/November 16, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — PostEra, a biotechnology company specializing in artificial intelligence for preclinical drug discovery, today announced a multi-target collaboration with Amgen, a leading biotechnology company.
The collaboration will leverage PostEra’s AI platform, Proton, a pioneering innovation in generative chemistry and synthesis-aware design, and Amgen’s drug discovery expertise, to advance up to 5 small molecule programs. Upon a certain number of programs entering the collaboration, Amgen will have the option to access some of PostEra’s key AI technologies for its in-house programs, outside of the collaboration.
The agreement includes upfront funding, and milestone payments, in addition to royalties on any approved products arising from the collaboration.
“We are excited to collaborate with Amgen, which has a wealth of expertise across multiple therapeutic areas and an illustrious history of tackling some of biology’s hardest targets”, said Dr Alpha Lee, CSO of PostEra. “The Proton platform has been validated repeatedly in its ability to significantly tackle even the most challenging small molecule drug discovery programs”. “We believe AI can significantly improve drug discovery but we’re also aware of the hype around the technology. As such we’ve worked hard to prove the value of Proton on real discovery programs, with multiple partners, across multiple therapeutic areas”, added Aaron Morris, CEO of PostEra.
About PostEra
PostEra was founded in 2019 and its machine learning technology is built on pioneering academic research done by its founding scientists. PostEra’s technology addresses some of the key challenges in small molecule drug discovery by industrializing the design-make-test cycle of medicinal chemistry. PostEra advances small molecule programs through partnerships with biopharma while also advancing its own internal pipeline. The company has closed $1Bn in AI partnerships across multiple biopharma partners. PostEra also launched and led the world’s largest open-science drug discovery effort; COVID Moonshot.
