Israel-based AION Labs, an AI-enabled drug discovery partnership between global pharma and tech companies, has launched ProPhet, a startup using artificial intelligence to locate small molecules for drug discovery.

ProPhet was established following AION Labs' startup challenge focused on AI-powered drug discovery of new high-affinity small molecules.

The aim is to address the market need to speed up, refine and enhance the early stages of drug discovery by focusing on proteins that are challenging because of finite information while substantially lowering the time and cost of identifying potential drug candidates for these targets.

According to the company, ProPhet speaks to the biological and computational obstacles by using state of the art machine learning technologies, like diffusion models and LLMs to create optimized novel algorithms.

"Proteins are influenced by their surroundings, which can cause them to adopt various possible conformational states," Tom Shani, CEO of ProPhet, said in a statement. 

"Our platform enables us to both evaluate these different states and screen vast small molecule libraries against them in a highly scalable manner. AION Labs has provided the perfect environment for our company to grow, with the opportunity to partner with the strongest players in the pharmaceutical industry to optimize our design process. This ensures we are well-aligned with the industry's priorities and needs."

Mati Gill, CEO of AION Labs, noted that small molecules make up most of the developed drugs, making ProPhet's method particularly important via its broad applicability across a wide range of treatments.

"Dr. Shani has formed the ideal team for this space, possessing the perfect combination of biological, chemistry and computational expertise. We are excited to support ProPhet with the necessary resources and connections to succeed," Gill said in a statement.

THE LARGER TREND

Founded in 2021, AION labs works with major pharma companies, including AstraZeneca, Merck, Pfizer, Israel Biotech Fund and Teva Pharmaceuticals, as well as tech company Amazon Web Services and German independent research institute Bio Med X.

In March, AION Labs launched a startup, CombineAble.AI, designed to speed up the development of therapeutics by addressing challenges connected to antibody design. The company develops a platform that combines AI with computational methods for biomolecule simulations aimed at developing new biotherapeutics.  

In January, AION Labs launched a new startup, TenAces. The company utilizes AI, integrating biology and machine learning algorithms, to discover molecular glue therapies to improve targeted protein degradation. 

In 2023, AION launched its second startup, DenovAI. DenovAI is an AI-enabled computational biophysics platform that can discover potential antibodies directed toward specific epitopes (the part of an antigen molecule recognized by the immune system to which an antibody attaches itself). The platform designs antibodies from scratch, then suggests which candidates will most likely produce effective drugs.  

The company launched OMEC.AI in 2022, which aims to build an AI-enabled computational platform to help researchers assess the clinical trial readiness of a drug candidate, identify hidden safety liabilities and suggest experiments to close any identified gaps. 

PromiseBio is another AION Labs company that offers epiproteomic analysis for precision medicine with the aim to decipher biological insights into complex chronic conditions, including autoimmune diseases.