VantAI, an AI-first induced-proximity company, today announced it has entered into a multi-year collaboration agreement with Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson (‘Janssen’). The agreement was facilitated by Johnson & Johnson Innovation.

Under the terms of the agreement, VantAI and Janssen will leverage VantAI's geometric deep learning platform to potentially generate novel molecular-glue and hetero-bifunctional, protein degrader drug candidates for important disease targets and collaborate on the discovery and implementation of novel E3 ubiquitin ligase platforms.

Under the terms of the agreement, the collaboration will initially focus on two degrader programs as well as a novel E3 ligase platform development program. In addition, Janssen will receive an exclusive commercial license to all programs under the collaboration and will be responsible for global development and commercialization.

VantAI’s technology leverages geometric deep learning to generate insights from millions of years of naturally occurring, evolved interfaces, so that such interfaces can be mimicked during its design process. This ‘Protein-Contact-First’ (PCF) approach simplifies the complex chemical design challenge of bringing proteins together in the cell, yielding non-obvious, more glue-like solutions with optimized parameters including potency, selectivity and molecule size.

“At VantAI we believe that induced proximity systems can provide significant value across a range of debilitating diseases where traditional small molecule approaches have struggled,” said Zachary W. Carpenter, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of VantAI.  “We are thrilled to be working with the scientists at Janssen to use machine learning to rationally engineer the protein interface component of these systems.”

About VantAI

VantAI leverages the cell's most powerful systems through rationally-designed small molecule proximity inducers - building on nature's blueprint using Deep Learning. These ML models make VantAI uniquely suited to power a best-in-class solution for induced proximity, where the nuance of protein-protein interactions and the ability to understand and model large complex biological interactomes, such as protein degradation, has outsized influence on drug success. Our evolutionary scoring learns from naturally occurring interfaces, allowing generative models to design smaller more “glue-like” molecules that form highly cooperative ternary complexes. VantAI has collaborated with numerous leading biopharma partners to launch new development programs with exciting properties enabled through its unique ‘Protein-Contact-First’ approach—at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional methods. VantAI is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Roivant Sciences (Nasdaq: ROIV). For more information, please visit http://www.vant.ai.

Source: VantAI