Exscientia Announces Sixth Molecule Created Through Generative AI Platform to Enter Clinical Stage

Exscientia today announced that Sumitomo Pharma plans to initiate a Phase 1 clinical study of DSP-2342 in the United States. DSP-2342 is a highly-selective bispecific small molecule with potent dual 5-HT2A and 5-HT7 antagonist activity with broad potential in psychiatric disease. It is the third molecule created utilising Exscientia’s AI-driven drug discovery platform under a collaboration with Sumitomo Pharma, referred to as design as a service or DaaS.

“With three AI-generated development compounds designed for Sumitomo Pharma, plus our own emerging pipeline, we have repeatedly validated our approach and are on track to achieve our vision of encoding and automating pharmaceutical R&D,” said Andrew Hopkins, founder and Chief Executive Officer at Exscientia. “Using AI, we are creating a much more efficient process to design and develop differentiated drug candidates. We believe that all new therapies will be designed with the help of AI in the future.”

Following the successful conclusion of the DaaS partnership for DSP-2342, Sumitomo Pharma holds all further development, commercial and economic rights to the compound. However, Exscientia maintains ownership of or economic rights to all compounds in its portfolio outside of the original Sumitomo Pharma agreement. These include EXS21546, an A_2A receptor antagonist, GTAEXS617, a CDK7 inhibitor and EXS4318, a selective PKC-theta inhibitor being evaluated in inflammatory diseases by Bristol Myers Squibb. In addition, two further wholly owned precision oncology development candidates, EXS74539, an LSD1 inhibitor and EXS73565, a MALT1 protease inhibitor, have been announced recently and are currently progressing through IND/CTA-enabling studies.