Combined Technologies Approach could Ease Drug Development

A formal partnership that combines Arctoris’ automated drug discovery platform and Molecule’s distributed IP ownership platform aims to reduce some of the problems facing drug discovery development initiatives across both industry and academia.

"Drug discovery researchers worldwide face enormous challenges posed by a widespread lack of reproducibility and the limited availability of standardised, structured, high quality data. By partnering with Molecule, we intend to make drug discovery and development more democratic, collaborative and efficient in the interest of bringing higher-quality therapeutics to patients faster through the combination of robotics, AI and a distributed research platform,” said Martin-Immanuel Bittner, MD DPhil, Co-Founder and CEO of Arctoris.

Arctoris recently opened its fully automated research facility based in Oxford (UK) where robotics perform a range of the most frequent drug discovery assays for researchers worldwide.

“We aim to create an open source ecosystem for collaborative drug development thereby distributing the cost, risk and ownership of drug development by offering fractional ownership in pharmaceutical IP in exchange for preclinical or clinical development work, as well as funding. Through this partnership with Arctoris, our joint aim is to accelerate innovation and advances in drug discovery and development, more rapidly bringing drugs to market and enhancing patient therapies,” said Tyler Golato, Co-Founder & Chief Scientist at Molecule.

The two companies are will combining their technologies to create a modular pipeline for distributed therapeutics development in which they will involve universities, patient advocacy groups, pharmaceutical and biotechnological companies, as well as investors. Shares in intellectual property or direct funding will be provided to stakeholders that participate in the development of therapeutics.