St. John’s Cancer Institute Partners with Absci to Expedite Development of Cancer Therapies

Absci’s generative AI and wet lab capabilities combined with St. John’s Cancer Institute’s molecular database of cancer patient specimens will accelerate the development of immunotherapies.

VANCOUVER, Wash. and NEW YORK, Feb. 09, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Absci Corporation (Nasdaq: ABSI), a generative AI drug creation company, and St. John’s Cancer Institute (SJCI), a pioneer in cancer care, research and innovation, today announced they have entered into a partnership to uncover breakthrough cancer therapies.

This partnership will leverage Absci’s Integrated Drug Creation™ platform, which combines cutting-edge generative AI models and proprietary wet-lab technologies and SJCI’s leading cancer biospecimen repository and molecular database to identify at accelerated speeds new therapeutic candidates with the potential for higher probability of clinical success. The combination of knowledge and resources will expand the search and discovery space for novel antibodies, immunomodulatory molecules, and drug targets for a diverse set of solid tumor cancers with an initial focus on urological and gastrointestinal cancers where there is a major need to bring novel treatments to more cancer patients.

“St. John’s Cancer Institute has pioneered advances in cancer immunotherapy for decades and built one of the largest cancer tissue specimen biorepositories in the United States,” said Sean McClain, Founder and CEO of Absci. “Currently, it takes about ten years and costs over $1 billion to bring one drug to market for patients. The combination of our generative AI platform and SJCI’s large biorepositories and related molecular analysis database can accelerate the development of better biologics for patients, faster.”

Through the partnership, Absci will integrate SJCI’s extensive clinically annotated molecular data assets into Absci’s target discovery platform. The novel targets will be screened and assessed for parameters important to drug development and for functional and mechanistic validation using Absci’s industry-leading AI capabilities, catalyzing and accelerating SJCI’s discovery and development of promising cancer drug targets and therapies.

“Our team at SJCI and everyone at Absci is driven by a singular vision of expediting the discovery and development of better novel cancer therapies that are effective for patients,” said Dave Hoon, Professor and Director of SJCI Translational Research, Dept of Translational Molecular Medicine and Genome Sequencing Center at SJCI. “Absci’s unrivaled integration of its generative AI and scalable biological wet lab expertise allows us to do that while also identifying antibody candidates that might otherwise remain untapped with today’s conventional discovery approaches.”

As a component of the partnership, Absci and SJCI may also choose to further expand the collaboration through the development of therapeutic candidates towards IND-enabling studies and clinical trials, as well as conducting early-stage clinical trials for newly discovered therapeutics at St. John’s Cancer Institute.

About Absci

Absci is a generative AI drug creation company that combines AI with scalable wet lab technologies to create better biologics for patients, faster. Our Integrated Drug Creation™ platform unlocks the potential to accelerate time to clinic and increase the probability of success by simultaneously optimizing multiple drug characteristics important to both development and therapeutic benefit. With the data to train, the AI to create, and the wet lab to validate, we can screen billions of cells per week, allowing us to go from AI-designed antibodies to wet lab-validated candidates in as little as six weeks. Our vision is to deliver breakthrough therapeutics at the click of a button, for everyone. Absci’s headquarters is in Vancouver, WA, with our AI Research Lab in New York City and an Innovation Center in Zug, Switzerland. Visit www.absci.com and follow us on LinkedIn (@absci), Twitter (@Abscibio), and YouTube.

About St. John’s Cancer Institute

Saint John’s Cancer Institute is a world-class clinical and translational oncology research facility located in Santa Monica, CA, that is dedicated to the understanding, diagnosis, and innovative treatment of cancer. Since its affiliation with Saint John’s Health Center over 30 years ago, the institute combines the exceptional quality of Saint John’s medical staff and hospital with translational research, fellowships, and extensive global collaboration. Leading the remarkable charge of the institute founder, the late Donald L. Morton, M.D., whose persistent, scientific questioning of the pioneering role of immunotherapy and surgical oncology in fighting cancer led to significant advances throughout his decorated career. The SJCIDept. Translational Molecular Medicine also holds many patents involving noncoding RNA and cfDNA as blood biomarkers, molecular Lymphatic Mapping, and epigenetics as related to tumor progression. SJCI has had a long history in Ab development, sequencing, and assessment in cancer patients' blood. SJCI has been the center and leader in multiple phase II and phase III clinical trials. The institute is associated with Providence Saint John’s Health Center — a premier healthcare facility that proudly serves the Santa Monica, CA community and surrounding areas.

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