AION Labs, In Continued Partnership with BioMed X, Launches New Global Call for Applications: Identification of Active Small Molecules for Drug Discovery

AION Labs, a first-of-its-kind innovation lab spearheading the adoption of AI technologies and computational science to solve therapeutic challenges, and German independent research institute BioMed X, announced the launch of its latest global call for applications to identify AI and machine learning professionals and biomedical scientists and inventors to form a new startup at AION Labs’ headquarters in Rehovot, Israel.

AION Labs’ sixth startup will focus on the development of an AI platform capable of rapidly and accurately identifying active molecules for potential drug candidates – even in cases where the structure of the target protein and existing binding molecules are unknown – by screening for hits from a pre-defined library of small molecules and generating a short list of hits ranked by their potential binding affinity. The technology will enable accurate modeling of targets for small molecule design, accelerating the small molecule drug discovery process.

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“Computational drug design software has traditionally focused on improving existing molecules with known binding structure. Recent technological advancements now offer the potential to expand the scope by enabling scenarios with limited initial data,” said Dr. Yair Benita, CTO of AION Labs. “We look forward to collaborating with top talent in developing an advanced computational solution to build on this potential and to expand the possibilities for novel drug discovery.”

Traditionally, computational drug design methods have relied on accurate models of the drug targets and active site, as well as knowledge of existing binding molecules as a starting point. However, in nearly half of the drug discovery cases, the target structure is unavailable, the active site is not well-defined, and no known binding molecules exist. This has led to time-consuming trial and error cycles in experimental screens to identify active molecules.

AION Labs is inviting startups, computational biologists, bioinformatics and proteomics scientists, molecular biologists, data scientists, and AI and machine learning professionals to propose the development of a next-generation computational platform for virtual screening of a predefined compound library, identification of multiple high-affinity hits, and a ranking of these results based on their binding affinity when the input is a target protein sequence. Original ideas that go far beyond the current state-of-the-art are being encouraged.

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