BRIEF—Exscientia and Blue Oak to use AI to find brain disorder drugs

Privately-held Blue Oak Pharmaceuticals and and Exscientia, a clinical-stage artificial intelligence (AI) drug-discovery company, have announced a drug-discovery collaboration to treat brain disorders.

This collaboration combines Blue Oak’s therapeutic area expertise and ability to design new, CNS focused privileged chemotypes with Exscientia’s ability to apply AI technologies to design dual targeted small molecules.

Exscientia’s chief executive Andrew Hopkins said: “It is thrilling to work with the founders of Blue Oak Pharmaceuticals, who were previously key drivers in the discovery of new classes of neuropsychiatric drugs that have recently achieved breakthrough status at the US Food and Drug Administration. By combining Blue Oak’s therapeutic area expertise with our unique proven AI technologies, we intend to make rapid inroads to develop innovative medicines.”

Thomas Large, chief executive of Blue Oak, said: ”We’ve known the strengths of the Exscientia AI platform for some time, especially the ability to evolve very small molecules that can selectively interact with more than one target. With Blue Oak’s deep knowledge of complex neuropsychiatric illness, we will be able to look at carefully chosen target combinations that can bring major benefit to psychiatric patients.”