Iktos, a company specialized in artificial intelligence (AI) for novel drug design and Astrogen, a clinical and research-oriented biotech company focused in developing innovative new drugs for treatment of intractable neurological diseases today announced that the companies have entered into a research collaboration agreement aimed at discovery of innovative small molecule pre-clinical drug candidates for Parkinson's disease.

Under the terms of the agreement, Iktos will apply its proprietary active learning based deep docking and de novo structure-based generative modelling technologies to design and optimize novel compounds and expedite the identification of pre-clinical drug candidates targeting an undisclosed target for the treatment of Parkinson’s disease. Astrogen will contribute to in-vitro/in-vivo efficacy screening of lead compounds/pre-clinical drug candidates and will lead the entire development process from pre-clinical stage. The companies will share responsibility for generating lead compounds and pursuing the optimal development path for selecting pre-clinical drug candidates.

“We are thrilled to collaborate with Astrogen, a leading biotech company based in S. Korea focused on developing innovative drugs for neurological diseases. We are proud and excited to announce our first collaboration deal in S. Korea bio-pharma sector’’ commented Yann Gaston-Mathé, President and CEO of Iktos. “Our objective is to expedite drug discovery and achieve time and cost efficiencies for our global collaborators by using Iktos’s proprietary AI platform and know-how. We are confident that together we will be able to identify promising novel chemical matter for the treatment of intractable neurological diseases. Our strategy has always been to tackle challenging problems alongside our collaborators where we can demonstrate value generation for new and on-going drug discovery projects.”

“We are very pleased to collaborate with Iktos, one of the leading AI companies in drug design and discovery. Iktos has successfully utilized their proprietary AI platform in multiple real world drug discovery projects as demonstrated by several collaborations established to date with leading global pharmaceutical companies. We are looking forward to this collaboration, as we believe that there is good chance to build up a mutually beneficial business model, by combining the strengths of biotech companies specialized in novel target identification and AI companies with their proprietary drug designing platform technology” commented JoonBeom Park, the director of Business Development at Astrogen.

About Iktos

Incorporated in October 2016, Iktos is a start-up company specializing in the development of artificial intelligence solutions applied to chemical research, more specifically medicinal chemistry and new drug design. Iktos is developing a proprietary and innovative solution based on deep learning generative models, which enables, using existing data, the design of molecules that are optimized in silico to meet all the success criteria of a small molecule discovery project. The use of Iktos technology enables major productivity gains in upstream pharmaceutical R&D. Iktos offers its technology both as professional services and as a SaaS software platform, Makya™. Iktos is also developing Spaya™, a synthesis planning software based upon Iktos’s proprietary AI technology for retrosynthesis.

More information on: http://www.iktos.ai/

About Astrogen

Founded in 2017, Astrogen is a S.Korea based clinical and research-oriented biotech company developing treatment of intractable neurological diseases. The company is specialized in discovering new therapeutic targets, conducting efficacy tests of compounds, and planning/administration of clinical strategies. The lead candidate in the pipeline is AST-001, under phase 2 clinical development in S.Korea for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). The company aims to become a leading a biopharmaceutical company in neurodegenerative and intractable neurological diseases by utilizing innovative business models