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Frontier IP gets boost as portfolio company Exscientia agrees AI collaboration with GlaxoSmithKline

Last updated: 14:35 03 Jul 2017 BST, First published: 07:35 03 Jul 2017 BST

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Making the next drug discovery cheaper is Exscientia's aim

Frontier IP PLC (LON:FIPP) saw its shares jump today on news its portfolio company Exscientia Limited is to collaborate with pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline plc (LON:GSK) on the use of artificial intelligence to identify new drug candidates.

In mid afternoon trading, Frontier IP shares were up 11.8% at 42.5p.

Exscientia will use its artificial intelligence enhanced platform to identify pre-clinical drug candidates for up to 10 disease-related targets nominated by GSK across multiple therapeutic areas.

If all ten targets produce positive results, Exscientia can receive a total of £33mln in milestone and stage payments. 

Andrew Hopkins, Exscientia’s chief executive, said: "Applying our approach to client discovery projects has already delivered candidate-quality molecules in roughly one-quarter of the time, and at one-quarter of the cost of traditional approaches.”

The company has one deal already in place with Sanofi.

“Delivering efficiencies to drug discovery has the potential to revolutionise the way early projects are executed,” he added.  

Term of the deal incentivise Exscientia to reduce the number of compounds required for synthesis and assay in order to achieve lead and candidate compound goals added John Baldoni, a senior vice-president at Glaxo. 

“Exscientia will apply both its 'Big Data' resources comprising, among other things, medicinal chemistry and large-scale bio-assays, and its AI-driven algorithms to design novel molecules that fulfil the requirements of the lead and candidate criteria."

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