Eli Lilly and Circle Pharma have announced an agreement that enables Circle Pharma to use Lilly TuneLab, a pioneering artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) platform.
Circle Pharma, based in the US, is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company pioneering next-generation targeted macrocycle therapeutics for difficult-to-treat cancers.
Lilly’s platform is designed to accelerate the development of new medicines by providing biotech companies access to powerful drug discovery models that have been trained on Lilly’s proprietary research data.
Circle Pharma will leverage Lilly TuneLab to further strengthen its AI/ML capabilities and proprietary MXMO platform, which is designed to overcome key challenges in macrocycle drug development to enable the creation of intrinsically cell-permeable and orally bioavailable macrocycle therapies, including for historically undruggable targets.
The company’s lead programme, CID-078, is a first-in-class, orally bioavailable cyclin A/B RxL inhibitor that is being evaluated in a phase 1 clinical trial for patients with advanced solid tumours.
“We are thrilled to partner with Lilly and gain access to TuneLab,” said Constantine Kreatsoulas, senior vice president, head of discovery technology sciences at Circle Pharma. “This collaboration will further enhance our MXMO platform, which enables us to better predict how various types of macrocycles may be able to penetrate cells, show oral bioavailability, exhibit desirable drug-like properties and be manufactured at scale.
“This collaboration comes at an important time of growth at Circle Pharma with our lead programme, CID-078, now in clinical development and our preclinical pipeline advancing rapidly to address cyclins and other historically undruggable targets in oncology.”
This agreement is part of the Lilly Catalyze360 model, a comprehensive approach to empower early-stage biotechs to advance groundbreaking science by providing access to capital, cutting-edge lab space and technology, and drug development talent and resources.