Abcsi CEO Sean McClain
Cathy Cheney
Absci Corp. (Nasdaq: ABSI) is about to embark on a collaboration with Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York to develop six new cancer drugs.
The Vancouver, Washington-based AI drug creation company announced the partnership earlier this week. Absci CEO Sean McClain shared a few more details about the co-development agreement in a Friday interview.
- Absci will share costs 50-50 with MSK. McClain expects it to cost $14 million to $15 million to develop a therapy up to the point that it can go into initial clinical trials. That’s compared to an industry standard of $30 million-to-$40 million, he said.
- Each party brings different strengths to the table. “One thing I’m really excited about with this partnership is they can leverage their domain expertise in cancer biology,” McClain said. “Together we’ll select which cancer targets we want to pursue, and we’ll use our AI drug discovery platform to design the antibodies.”
- The timeline should be similar to Absci’s in-house development for an antibody targeting inflammatory bowel disease, or about 24 months, compared with an industry standard of five years, McClain said.
- McClain first connected with MSK leaders at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference, held annually in San Francisco in January. “They were evaluating other AI drug discovery companies to work with and really saw the value of what AI drug discovery could do and initially kicked off the discussions there, and this is the first AI drug discovery partnership MSK has done,” McClain said.
- He explained how cancer targets will be selected: “Once they identify the target, they’ll take it to the joint steering committee and present the biology behind the target, and if we’re all excited, we will be moving forward. We’re at the target selection phase and hoping to have our first target selected in the near future.”
In addition to the Sloan Kettering partnership, Absci's financial outlook has improved. The company narrowed its net loss in the second quarter to $24.75 million from $41.72 million during the same period a year earlier, according to financial statements released earlier this week.
