Small molecules make up the majority of medicines approved in the United States. While treatments such as antibodies and cell therapies are growing, around 60% of new U.S. FDA-approved drugs are small molecules, Excelsior Sciences CEO Michael Foley told Reuters correspondent Kamal Choudhury.
Discovering and making small molecules remains slow and costly, “often taking more than a decade and billions of dollars as each molecule requires a custom synthesis process.” Excelsior’s modular “smart bloccs” approach, can help AI “better predict hot create and optimize new therapies;” And the same synthetic process used to discovery the molecules, can be used to manufacture them as well.
Excelsior Sciences transforms the equation. Jim Flynn, managing partner at Deerfield, points out that a typical cycle of four months or more – often involving work split across multiple nations and contractors – can be reduced to about two weeks in a single automated facility. The same process can then be scaled up for manufacturing, potentially saving another year to 18 months before clinical trials begin.
