Yesterday, XtalPi made a strategic partnership announcement with CK Life Sciences, a part of the CK Hutchison Group. To enhance the discovery and design capabilities of tumour vaccines and speed up the creation of more vaccine kinds, XtalPi and CK Life Sciences will combine their respective skills to establish a revolutionary AI tumour vaccine R&D platform. Precision therapy for patients around the world is the aim f this collaboration.
According to available data, about 20 million people with cancer had new diagnoses in 2021, with roughly 4.5 million of those instances occurring in China. Numerous cancer forms result in unfavourable outcomes, have high morbidity and mortality rates, and yet have many unmet clinical needs. In order to activate the patient’s own unique immune responses, tumour vaccines targeting various tumour neoantigens, tumour-associated antigens (TAA), and tumour-specific antigens (TSA) in patients can be developed.
Currently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has only licenced two therapeutic tumour vaccines, sipuleucel-T for melanoma and Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) for bladder cancer, as well as preventative tumour vaccines against hepatitis B and the human papillomavirus (FDA). Other cancer vaccines have recently begun to undergo clinical trials, and efficacy data is starting to accumulate.
The global market for cancer vaccines was valued at US$6.79 billion in 2021, and Mordor Intelligence projects that it will expand at a compound annual growth rate of 11.53% from 2022 to 2026. By 2026, a market worth about $12 billion is anticipated.
The complexity and length of the design and preclinical development process for cancer vaccines at the moment limits their effectiveness and failure rate.
This partnership aims to develop an AI tumour vaccine R&D platform that applies cutting-edge AI algorithms and high-precision molecular modelling to predict and design a variety of tumour vaccines that can activate particular immune responses to kill tumours. This collaboration incorporates XtalPi’s industry expertise in AI computation and robotic automation. The tumour vaccines will be tested and verified using automated procedures, and the platform is anticipated to produce preclinical tumour vaccine candidate compounds with potent immune activity by incorporating algorithmic feedback to optimise activity and efficacy.
“As a company headquartered in the Hetao Shenzhen-Hong Kong Science and Technology Innovation Cooperation Zone, XtalPi is committed to realising the synergies between Shenzhen and Hong Kong by creating a new paradigm for innovation in the Greater Bay Area. Empowered by the latest technological advancements in automation, artificial intelligence is accelerating more innovative and diverse areas in drug research and development. Together with CK Life Sciences, we are committed to overcome conventional limitations and discover diverse applications for cutting-edge technologies. We believe the AI cancer vaccine platform jointly developed by CK Life Sciences and XtalPi will inspire the global scientific community to progress vaccine research and development and fast-track key development milestones for cancer vaccines. We are confident that this collaboration will significantly facilitate the scientific research exchange in the Greater Bay Area.”
Dr. Shuhao Wen, co-founder and chairman of XtalPi
“The R&D of tumour vaccines is one of the key development directions of CK Life Sciences. The cooperation with XtalPi will apply XtalPi’s AI algorithm, molecular modeling and automated experiments to speed up the R&D process, improve the success rate, and increase the efficacy of tumour vaccines.”
Dr. Melvin Toh, Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer of CK Life Sciences
