The non-profit consortium is developing publicly accessible advanced AI-based drug discovery software tools
OpenFold, a non-profit AI research consortium dedicated to creating free, open-source software tools for biology and drug discovery, announced eight new industry partners. Joining the consortium are Bristol Myers Squibb, COGNANO, Lambda, Novo Nordisk, Structure Therapeutics, Tamarind Bio, Unnatural Products, and Visterra, each bringing valuable expertise and a shared commitment to harnessing AI technologies to accelerate drug discovery. With these additions, OpenFold continues to expand its collaborative network of academic and industry leaders for the advancement of open-source AI in molecular sciences.
“Each new member enhances OpenFold’s mission to drive innovation and collaboration in AI-powered drug discovery and industrial biotechnology. By developing tools accessible to everyone—from aspiring students to top biotech and pharmaceutical companies—we are collectively advancing the development of transformative medicines through state-of-the-art technologies and joint research initiatives,” said Alexandre Zanghellini, co-founder and CEO of Arzeda and an Executive Committee member of OpenFold Consortium.
Since its founding, OpenFold Consortium has released high-impact open-source artificial intelligence algorithms including the OpenFold protein structure prediction software, OpenFold-SoloSeq for rapid structural prediction that circumvents the need for multiple sequence alignments, and OpenFold-Multimer for prediction of protein-protein interactions. These community-driven tools have been widely-adopted by both academic and industry researchers, growing the consortium’s open-source ecosystem for structural biology and AI-driven drug discovery.
OpenFold was founded in February 2022 as a supported project of the Open Molecular Software Foundation, a non-profit organization centered on the advancement of molecular sciences by building communities for open-source research software development. The new members join OpenFold’s founders and existing members, bringing the total membership to 24 member companies, six of which are global pharmaceutical firms, Arzeda, Astex Pharmaceuticals, Basecamp Research, Bayer, Biogen, CHARMM Therapeutics, Congruence Therapeutics, Cyrus Biotechnology, Dassault Systemes, Outpace, Polaris Quantum Biotech, Psivant Therapeutics, Puxano, SandboxAQ, UCB, and Valence Labs, three supporting companies–Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and NVIDIA, and two academic partnerships–Prof. Mohammed AlQuraishi’s Laboratory, Prof. Gabriel Rocklin’s Laboratory.
Bristol Myers Squibb of New York, New York, is a global biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing innovative therapies, leveraging AI as part of the company’s commitment to advancing healthcare.
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COGNANO, headquartered in Kyoto, Japan, is using the immune system to accumulate data for training AI models. Single-domain antibodies present in alpacas and sharks can be decoded in large quantities by next-generation sequencers, providing an ideal basis for the efficiency of machine learning and paving the way for an era of new drug discovery. As an example, by using reverse biomarker discovery techniques, we have discovered new drug discovery targets in several cancers that had not been explored before. In addition, antibody-antigen labeled data serves as an essential tool for the general understanding of molecular interactions. “We are pleased to contribute to logical drug design through collaboration with OpenFold consortium members,” said Dr. Akihiro Imura, founder.
Lambda of San Jose, California, is the #1 GPU Cloud for ML/AI teams training, fine-tuning and inferencing AI models, where engineers can easily, securely and affordably build, test and deploy AI products at scale. Lambda’s product portfolio spans from on-prem GPU hardware to hosted GPUs in public and private Clouds, servicing researchers, AI native companies and Enterprises world-wide.
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Novo Nordisk of Bagsvaerd, Denmark, is a global healthcare company renowned for its leadership in diabetes care, as well as its innovative treatments in areas such as obesity, hemophilia, and growth disorders. The company has made significant contributions to the OpenFold consortium by providing technical and scientific expertise as well as compute resources to accelerate model training. “Novo Nordisk is proud to support this important scientific initiative and contribute towards the development of an open source model for protein structure prediction that will serve as the foundation for further scientific advancement and discovery,” said Peter Clark, Vice President of Computational Drug Design.
Structure Therapeutics,headquartered in San Francisco, California, is a biotechnology company focused on developing accessible, oral, small-molecule drugs for chronic metabolic diseases.
Tamarind Bio of San Francisco, California, is a biotechnology company founded in 2023 that provides a no-code bioinformatics platform enabling life scientists to perform tasks such as protein structure prediction, protein design, and molecular docking without the need for coding expertise.
Unnatural Products of Santa Cruz, California, is a biotechnology company developing synthetic macrocycles with high specificity and oral bioavailability for intracellular and extracellular targets.
Visterra, headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts, is a biologics research and early-stage clinical development company developing therapies for patients with immune-mediated and other hard-to-treat diseases. “We are delighted to partner with OpenFold and contribute to their mission of democratizing AI for drug discovery. Visterra is eager to contribute its expertise in antibody discovery and protein engineering, which aligns well with the efforts of the consortium. The tools that are developed by this community will allow us to build on our efforts to apply cutting-edge protein modeling tools to our discovery efforts, helping to bring transformative therapies to patients faster,” said Sr. Director of Research Andrew Wollacott.
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Source – businesswire
