Lisata and GATC Health Expand Partnership for AI-Driven Drug Discovery
Lisata Therapeutics, Inc. and GATC Health Corp. announced a strategic alliance designed to accelerate and improve the success rate of the traditional drug development process.
This collaboration builds on the foundation of earlier work performed by GATC for Lisata, in which GATC provided AI-derived analysis in support of Lisata’s certepetide drug candidate. Under the expanded relationship, Lisata will enhance its therapeutic pipeline by leveraging GATC’s proprietary Multiomics Advanced Technology (MAT) platform to identify new AI-predicted combination therapies (including with certepetide) across all therapeutic areas. This approach not only opens the door to new treatment possibilities but also ensures that any resulting intellectual property will be derisked by the MAT analysis, providing predictions of safety, efficacy and side effects with a high degree of certainty.
Under the agreement, Lisata’s team will contribute its proven capabilities in drug development along with its regulatory prowess to the relationship, as the companies advance the first development program for a promising new therapeutic agent targeting opioid use disorder (OUD). Discovered by GATC’s MAT platform, this OUD candidate is a non-opioid small molecule new chemical entity for which preclinical studies have demonstrated a significant reduction in fentanyl intake in validated murine models. In the advanced preclinical stage, GATC’s OUD asset is targeted to enter Phase 1 human trials early next year, confirming Lisata’s ability to accelerate and optimize the overall development and regulatory process while also validating the ability of GATC’s AI technology to generate novel drug candidates with a strong probability of development success.
“We are thrilled to join with GATC to create a much improved AI-driven paradigm of drug discovery and development. Studies predict AI technologies could create as much as $350 to $400 billion in value to the pharmaceutical industry by the end of 2025 while also shortening the drug discovery process from 5-6 years down to as little as one year1. This strategic alliance could be a blueprint for combining the power of advanced AI discovery with deep development expertise to unlock new therapeutic possibilities and bring potentially life-saving treatments to patients faster, more efficiently and at significantly lower cost,” stated David J. Mazzo, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Lisata. “We see the arrangement between Lisata and GATC as being both strategically and financially symbiotic for our companies. I’m eager to see the successful advancement of many MAT-discovered compounds through development to patients in need starting with GATC’s OUD molecule.”