Medicus Pharma (NASDAQ:MDCX) earlier this week shared details of a planned collaboration with Reliant AI to improve clinical trial execution through artificial intelligence.
The company’s chief medical officer, Dr Faisal Mehmud, said the collaboration will focus initially on supporting the development of Teverelix, a compound that was acquired through Medicus’s takeover of Antev during the summer.
Proactive: The company is out with some interesting news — you've entered into a non-binding letter of intent with a company called Reliant AI. Let's start there. Tell me a bit about this company.
Dr Faisal Mehmud: We're really excited about this. As you know, Medicus is a global biotech precision-guided company. Our lead asset, SkinJect for non-melanoma skin diseases, has just completed its Phase 2 development recruitment. We're hoping to get results early next year.
Our next studies are with Teverelix, which came to us through the acquisition of Antev this summer. We're planning two studies: one in high cardiovascular risk patients with prostate cancer, and another in acute urinary retention relapse prevention in men with benign prostatic hypertrophy.
When looking at those programs, we wanted to minimize the risk of delays, slow enrollment, or incorrect site selection. These can be make or break issues. So we began exploring AI collaboration partners, and that's where Reliant AI comes in.
So this partnership is about modernizing trial execution?
Exactly. The collaboration with Reliant AI is about modernising how we execute aggressive clinical trials, starting with Teverelix. Rather than using analytics from an off-the-shelf tool, we're working with Reliant to build a data-driven clinical execution capability. This will help with site selection, recruitment, and patient stratification. We'll start with one program but see the potential to scale.
With AI, what used to take a human a year or two can now be done in weeks. Am I right in saying that?
Yes. A lot of AI focus in drug development has been on discovery, which is valid. But our focus here is on clinical development, and being able to respond dynamically once a study is underway. That’s where we see differentiation — combining Reliant’s decision intelligence with our clinical data and resources to solve specific problems.
You're hoping to get this study underway mid-next year?
Yes, we’re aiming to start mid-next year and we’re on track.
And lastly — with AI increasingly present in everything, is this where companies like yours need to be heading?
Absolutely. We need to execute clinical programs in a capital-, time- and resource-efficient way. We can’t afford mistakes. The goal is to move drugs from Phase 1 to 3 quickly and effectively. We believe this partnership with Reliant AI will support us in making the right decisions throughout the program.
Quotes have been lightly edited for style and clarity