Profluent has entered into a collaboration with BioMarin Pharmaceutical to use artificial intelligence (AI) to design and optimize new enzyme therapies for BioMarin’s drug development pipeline.
Under the agreement, Profluent will use its AI models to generate and improve potential enzyme drug candidates. BioMarin will screen the resulting designs and evaluate the most promising candidates for further development.
Developing therapeutic enzymes can be a complex and time-consuming process. It often requires extensive protein engineering and screening to find molecules with the right activity and stability.
Profluent will use its proprietary protein language models to explore new enzyme designs. The models are supported by the Profluent Protein Atlas, which contains more than 115 billion unique protein sequences.
The companies aim to use the technology to quickly explore a large range of protein designs and identify candidates with desired activity and stability profiles. BioMarin could then move the strongest candidates into preclinical testing.
Pooja Agarwal, Ph.D., Vice President and Head of Metabolic Conditions Research at BioMarin, said Profluent’s AI technology could complement the company’s existing research capabilities and help accelerate the development of promising therapies.
The collaboration combines Profluent’s expertise in de novo protein design and optimization with BioMarin’s experience in developing enzyme replacement therapies and other enzyme-based medicines.
Ali Madani, CEO of Profluent, said the partnership could help accelerate BioMarin’s drug discovery pipeline by combining AI-based protein design with BioMarin’s experience in bringing enzyme therapies to patients.
The collaboration highlights the growing use of AI protein design in drug discovery, where companies are using advanced models to explore new therapeutic molecules and potentially reduce the time needed to identify viable drug candidates.
For BioMarin, the partnership provides access to Profluent’s large-scale protein design capabilities as the company continues to explore new enzyme-based treatments for diseases with significant unmet medical needs.