Emeryville, CA – October 23, 2024 – Octant, Inc. (“Octant”), a drug discovery company developing correctors for misfolding diseases, today announced a new collaborative initiative with up to $30.5 million in funding by Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) to develop open source AI models aimed at identifying and mitigating drug side effects during the early stages of development.
“The ARPA-H funding allows us to harness AI and machine learning built on data generated by our platform to take a proactive approach to drug safety, something we believe will set a new standard for the industry,” said Sri Kosuri, CEO of Octant.
This joint effort involves several entities that have since formed the OpenADMET Consortium, a collaboration focused on accelerating drug discovery while improving safety: Octant, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the nonprofit Open Molecular Software Foundation (OMSF), and John Chodera, PhD, from the AI-Driven Structure-enabled Antiviral Platform (ASAP) Discovery Consortium. The OpenADMET Consortium will work together to develop open source AI models based on key molecular structure insights and the generation of high-throughput experimental data. The group’s AVOID-OME project aims to use Octant’s navigator platform to generate the data needed to develop AI prediction for avoidance of "anti-targets"—protein sites responsible for common drug failures related to drug absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion, and toxicity (sometimes referred to in industry as “Admet”).
“We are excited to be a part of this groundbreaking effort alongside UCSF and OMSF,” Kosuri added. “By addressing potential side effects earlier in the process, we can significantly speed up development timelines and deliver safer therapies to patients faster.”
Octant is a small molecule drug discovery company developing correctors for protein misfolding diseases. Octant’s platform, The Navigator, combines high-throughput synthetic biology, generative chemistry, and AI/ML to discover and develop therapeutics against complex cellular mechanisms in human cells. Their pipeline is led by correctors programs for autosomal dominant Retinitis Pigmentosa (adRP) and Fabry Disease (FD), and includes several other programs across oncology and other serious diseases. For more information visit www.octant.bio.