Mer­ck KGaA en­lists lit­tle AI play­er on pro­tein de­grad­er dis­cov­ery

Mer­ck KGaA would like to come up with some pro­tein de­graders — the fash­ion­able way.

The Ger­man phar­ma has tapped CelerisTx, a Men­lo Park, CA-based biotech with roots in Aus­tria, and its ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence plat­form for two drug dis­cov­ery projects. The main goal, ac­cord­ing to the com­pa­nies, is to iden­ti­fy ac­tive small mol­e­cule binders.

Found­ed against the back­drop of emerg­ing PRO­TACs and mol­e­c­u­lar glues, CelerisTx’s mis­sion is to fill the gap for a ra­tio­nal ap­proach to de­sign­ing these com­pounds, which typ­i­cal­ly con­sists of two sides — one bind­ing to the tar­get pro­tein, an­oth­er to the E3 lig­ase — and a link­er to pull them to­geth­er.

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