Enveric Biosciences (NASDAQ:ENVB) Inc has taken a step further in its bid to develop psychedelic drug candidates, by using a machine-learning platform to identify molecules which could be advanced into pre-clinical studies.
In a statement, the biotech said that the artificial intelligence (AI) tool designed by April19 called PsyAI had successfully identified viable psychedelic molecules for further drug discovery from Enveric's initial list of 500 compounds within the company's 'Psybrary'.
Enveric told investors it believes it will be the first psychedelic drug discovery and development company to use this technology against an extensive psychedelic molecule library to evaluate higher-likelihood molecules to treat conditions, including cancer-related distress and PTSD.
"Through these machine-learning models, we believe we now have a greater ability to characterize and categorize our 'Psybrary' substituents, allowing Enveric to focus on the most promising molecules, accelerate development, and increase our confidence in the psychedelic drug candidates selected for advancement," said Dr Joseph Tucker, CEO of Enveric in a statement.
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"As we work to bring more psychedelics from discovery to the clinical phase, this is a powerful step in helping us develop the right drug candidates needed to address the global mental health challenges millions suffer from, beginning with cancer-related distress."
Enveric intends to use the results to predict drug likeness, central nervous system (CNS) exposure, oral bioavailability, toxicity, serotonin 5HT-2A receptor affinity and activity.
It then aims to rank the compounds by desirability and patentability compared to a dataset of FDA-approved, orally available CNS drugs.
The technology has also helped Enveric to identify clusters of compounds likely to undergo metabolic conversion into promising active compounds within the human body, therefore acting as prodrugs, the company added.
"Further analysis and examination of these prodrugs, also known as Generation 2 psychedelics, may expand the scope of the "Psybrary" and offer possible ways of improving or modifying the pharmacokinetic profiles of drug candidates," it said.
Enveric is developing a next-generation mental health and oncology treatment clinical discovery platform, leveraging psychedelic-derived molecules for the mind and synthetic cannabinoids for the body.
Contact the author at giles@proactiveinvestors.com