MindRank Begins IND-enabling Studies of its First AI-designed Drug, Eight Months After Program Initiation

(Asia) MindRank AI, an artificial intelligence (AI) driven biotech company based in Shanghai, China, announced that the company has nominated a pre-clinical candidate (PCC) for an important class B G protein-coupled receptors (GPCR) drug target, eight months after program initiation. Historically, the development of small-molecule agonists of class B GPCRs has proven particularly challenging.

Mindrank's proprietary AI drug-discovery platform, Molecule Pro, has designed, synthesized, or extensively characterized nearly 100 proprietary compounds both in vitro and in vivo. Among them, MindRank's team has identified several lead compounds with excellent functional potency and selectivity, favorable absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME) properties, oral bioavailability, desirable pharmacokinetics, and safety profiles. The compounds also showed robust pre-clinical efficacy and good tolerability in several disease-relevant animal models, thus great best-in-class potential for multiple chronic disease indications with large unmet medical needs.

This is the second drug candidate that has entered the Investigational New Drug- (IND)-enabling stage since the company's inception less than one year ago; MindRank has also successfully delivered an allosteric inhibitor PCC with best-in-class potential within a few months since the program initiated as a collaboration with a publicly traded biotech company, which started IND-enabling studies in September 2021.

"Our platform has greatly improved the efficiency of drug discovery. We strive to push the boundaries of AI for drug discovery by continuous innovations," commented Zhangming Niu, founder and CEO of MindRank.