Merck to Leverage BigHat's AI Platform in 3 Drug Discovery Programs

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BigHat Biosciences will team up with Merck Research Laboratories to design candidates for up to three drug discovery programs backed by the company’s proprietary artificial intelligence technology platform.

Bay Area-based BigHat, founded in 2019, will use its machine learning-enhanced Milliner design program to “synthesize, express, purify, and characterize molecules” for Merck.

The two companies have already begun working to identify the first protein that is part of the agreement, BigHat announced Tuesday. The partners hope their combined expertise will enable the development of optimized antibodies and other therapeutic proteins.

BigHat co-founder and CEO Mark DePristo told BioSpaceTuesday that his company developed a strategy to forge a handful of “deep, long-term partnerships” to push the capabilities of the Milliner platform. The platform promises to bring a molecule from design to testing in a matter of days. 

Merck is the first company that is part of this new collaboration strategy aimed at bringing forward inaccessible therapeutic designs, DePristo said.

“It was clear that working on multiple projects across a variety of molecules over multiple indications would be the best strategy.”

DePristo noted that big pharmas, such as Merck, have deep expertise in multiple indications—indications where BigHat will apply its own platform.

“There’s no substitute for having an experienced partner to go into areas of biomedicine where there is a need for specialist knowledge," DePristo said. "There are things we can do internally with our own therapies but there are broad areas of applications out there to be explored.”

Juan Alvarez, vice president of biologics discovery at Merck Research Laboratories, said the partnership with BigHat will expand its strategy of incorporating AI and machine learning across the company’s drug discovery capabilities.

The financial terms of the collaboration were not disclosed in the announcement.

BigHat’s antibody design platform integrates a high-speed characterization with AI and machine learning technologies to engineer antibodies that have more complex functions and better biophysical properties, according to the company.

Peyton Greenside, cofounder and chief scientific officer of BigHat, told BioSpace BigHat’s vision is to realize the expanse of what the Milliner platform can do when it comes to designing and developing molecules for therapeutics.

Earlier this year, the company added antibody-drug conjugates. It also doubled the capacity of the platform to 800 molecules per week, she said.

As BioSpace previously reported, the Milliner platform is designed to offer a high level of precision over the molecular properties of the antibodies.

Internally, DePristo said BigHat is still in the developmental stage with its own programs.

The company is “agnostic to indications” and has made investments in oncology and inflammation so far, he said.

Greenside said BigHat recently added an in vivo team which will speed up the company's own internal programs and take them into the animal testing phase.

“To see the molecules working in animals will be a huge milestone,” DePristo said.