DISRUPTIVE GPCR LEAD DISCOVERY PLATFORM DELIVERING NEW AND SAFER THERAPEUTICS

ended

InterAx Biotech, a Swiss company and spin-off from the ETH Zürich and the Paul Scherrer Institute, has built PICARD, an innovative and unique lead discovery platform for the design and selection of better drug candidates. PICARD combines a systems biology approach with experimental data and uses artificial intelligence methods to design novel compounds with the desired properties. This holistic approach differentiates PICARD from technologies now used in the pharmaceutical industry. Our systems biology approach provides PICARD with in vivo predictability, dramatically reducing the need for animal testing (60-80%) and increasing the probability of success of drug candidates in clinical trials. At the moment, the success rate in clinical trials is lower than 12%. This produces sizeable costs (€2.3 billion) and extremely long time to market (15 years or longer) in drug development. We offer custom-designed PICARD services to pharmaceutical and biotech companies that are outsourcing key stages of their drug discovery process. PICARD remarkably increases the efficiency of the drug discovery process, offering our customers economic savings of at least €150.7 million per developed drug and a reduction of time to market to 10 years. PICARD focuses on G-Protein Coupled Receptors (GPCRs), which are the target of 40% of the developed drugs. However, >70% of the pharmacologically relevant GPCRs are yet to be exploited, which creates an untapped global market opportunity of €71.2 billion. We intend to acquire, in seven years, 1-2% of the European and US available markets (€940 million). To achieve this goal, we have designed a business model in which PICARD is offered at increasing levels of support, investment and risks for our customers: service projects, pilot projects and long term partnerships. This strategy is devised to lower market entry barriers, allowing us to start commercialization right after Phase 2 execution, with a zero time to market.