Source: Recursion Pharmaceuticals
Pioneer in AI drugs Recursion Pharmaceuticals said Wednesday that one of its experimental treatments has reached a key milestone.
Recursion was able to use its AI-enabled drug discovery platform to identify an area of biology to target for the treatment of solid tumors and lymphoma, match it to a drug candidate, and advance to regulatory approval to begin studies in less time. 18 months.
“We think it's a really interesting test, not only for us as a company, but also for the tech industry,” CEO and co-founder Chris Gibson said in an interview with CNBC.
The Food and Drug Administration authorized the investigational new drug application for a Phase 1/2 clinical trial of an experimental drug candidate known as REC-1245. The company said the potential market for this treatment could be more than 100,000 patients in the United States and the European Union.
The trial will evaluate the safety and tolerability of REC-1245 and will begin in the fourth quarter of this year. Data from the Phase 1 dose escalation portion of the study could be completed by the end of next year, the company said.
The drug will target RBM39, which Recursion says appears functionally similar to a well-known but difficult-to-target marker known as CDK12, to treat advanced HR-proficient cancers such as ovarian, prostate, breast and pancreatic cancers.
“I think what's really exciting about this particular Recursion program is that this small molecule and this new target essentially emerged from a Google search equivalent, from this giant map of biology that we've already built,” Gibson said, referring to the sets of massive data that Recursion has created over the last 11 years.
“This is the first show to come out of that,” he continued. “It's the first program that really takes advantage of many of these new tools we've created in one unit.”
Hopes are high that artificial intelligence can significantly speed up drug discovery and make it less expensive by eliminating some of the time-consuming trial and error as drug candidates are screened and selected. But investors have wanted to see that reality can live up to expectations.
Recursive actions so far this year
Recursion, which counts Nvidia among its investors, has seen its shares fall 38% in 2024. But the stock is still more than 60% below the 52-week high it hit in late February.
The company plans to merge with another AI drug discovery company. excientiaallowing you to leverage even more data. The deal is expected to close early next year.
Most analysts rate Recursion shares a Hold, but two analysts have a Buy rating on the stock, according to FactSet. Analysts' average price target of $10.14 implies a return of 64%.
