NEW YORK – Valence Discovery and Repare Therapeutics on Wednesday said they will partner to develop precision oncology drugs using artificial intelligence.
For its part of the partnership, Montreal-based Valence will bring its artificial intelligence drug selection platform, which uses a "few-shot learning" approach, to identify high-quality, readily synthesizable molecules against novel targets while requiring minimal training set data. Meanwhile, Repare, also based in Montreal, will apply its expertise in target identification and medical chemistry.
Repare currently has a pipeline of synthetic lethality-based precision oncology agents, including an ATR inhibitor RP-3500, which is currently being evaluated in a Phase I/II clinical trial for patients with advanced solid tumors deemed likely to respond to the agent. The company uses a CRISPR-Cas9-based approach to developing cancer therapies that target genomic instability, including DNA damage repair.
"As a world-leader in precision oncology, Repare's team and technologies have the potential to unlock the next generation of precision oncology medicines for patients," Daniel Cohen, Valence's CEO, said in a statement. "We look forward to bringing our expertise in AI-enabled drug design to bear on such important challenges in drug discovery."