InterAx Bio­tech

InterAx Bio­tech is a spin-off from ETH Zurich and the Paul Scher­rer Insti­tute, Switz­er­land. The com­pany spe­cia­li­zes in G Pro­tein-Cou­pled Recep­tor (GPCR) drug dis­co­very and is reco­gni­zed as the world lea­der in quan­ti­ta­tive mecha­ni­stic under­stan­ding of GPCR drug action. InterAx deve­lo­ped a new mathe­ma­ti­cal model­ling approach that resol­ves the bio­lo­gi­cal mecha­nisms of drug effects at the cell signal­ling level – ther­eby addres­sing a cru­cial gap in con­ven­tio­nal drug dis­co­very. The vast majo­rity (90%) of drug can­di­da­tes fail in cli­ni­cal deve­lo­p­ment, and 50% of the fail­ures are due to the lack of drug effi­cacy in humans. This high­lights the insuf­fi­ci­ent under­stan­ding of the bio­logy of drug effects. Coin­ci­ding with this appa­rent know­ledge gap, many pre-cli­ni­cal pro­grams omit detailed cha­rac­te­ri­sa­tion of cell-level respon­ses, and pro­ceed rapidly from mole­cu­lar to ADMET and orga­nism-level studies.

InterAx has built an inte­gra­ted pre­cli­ni­cal drug dis­co­very plat­form around its uni­que mathe­ma­ti­cal models of GPCR cell signal­ling. The plat­form covers tar­get cha­rac­te­riza­tion, hit iden­ti­fi­ca­tion, hit-to-lead and lead opti­miza­tion stages. The plat­form com­bi­nes state-of-the-art time-resol­ved bio­logy assays, high through­put com­pound scree­ning, com­pu­ta­tio­nal sys­tems bio­logy, advan­ced mole­cu­lar dyna­mics, machine lear­ning / AI pipe­lines, and a full range of com­pu­ta­tio­nal che­mis­try and medi­cinal che­mis­try approa­ches. This „mecha­ni­stic biology“-centred plat­form unlocks pre­viously intrac­ta­ble and high-risk-of-fail­ure tar­gets. It was vali­da­ted in seve­ral indus­try col­la­bo­ra­ti­ons and is alre­ady yiel­ding drug can­di­da­tes with novel modes of action in onco­logy and meta­bo­lic dise­ase areas. For exam­ple, the com­pany has iden­ti­fied important cell signal­ling pro­per­ties cor­re­la­ted with side effects in orally available dia­be­tes tre­at­ments and is ratio­nally desig­ning new gene­ra­tion of drugs to replace injec­ta­ble tre­at­ments in a $50-bil­lion dol­lar market.

Given this company’s vital exper­tise in mole­cu­lar dyna­mics, mathe­ma­ti­cal models of GPCR drug action and machine lear­ning / AI approa­ches for drug cha­rac­te­riza­tion and design, InterAx is highly moti­va­ted by the UniS­ens tech­no­logy con­cept and its poten­tial to deli­ver bet­ter drugs faster.