The IP & Science business of Thomson Reuters and NuMedii have started an initiative to identify new treatments for areas of unmet medical need. The partnership, which pairs NuMedii’s technology with the hand-curated drug and disease information and systems biology expertise of Thomson Reuters, will create a repository of content and methodologies to systematically identify new applications for existing drug compounds.NuMedii will use Thomson Reuters MetaCore content, as well as Thomson Reuters Life Sciences Professional Services expertise in systems biology, in conjunction with its unique Big Data technology and databases, to find FDA-approved drugs or discontinued development compounds that are appropriate for repurposing. The companies will leverage this comprehensive collection of high-quality data, knowledge and predictive technologies to identify therapeutic candidates with the greatest probability for clinical success, in turn fulfilling NuMedii’s mission to discover and de-risk drugs that target new pathologies.
“NuMedii is blending various innovative technologies and life science data to create a next generation drug discovery and development engine,” said Gini Deshpande, PhD, founder and chief executive officer of NuMedii. “This unique partnership allows NuMedii access to an unparalleled source of knowledge from Thomson Reuters, enabling us to turbo-charge our search and discovery of new applications for existing therapies.”
NuMedii’s Big Data technology uses machine learning, pattern matching and network biology algorithms to find new indications for existing drugs. Three publications by researchers at Stanford University have already shown the promise of NuMedii’s approach. In each case, researchers demonstrated novel activity for existing drugs in preclinical experiments as predicted by NuMedii’s technology. Most recently, researchers showed that certain antidepressants identified with NuMedii’s technology have activity in experimental models of small cell lung cancer.
After a novel treatment is identified and validated in appropriate preclinical models, NuMedii will optimize the formulation and administration of the drug for the new use and advance the program to early clinical development. In most cases, NuMedii expects to leverage the expedited 505(b)(2) regulatory pathway in the United States for drugs previously approved by the FDA. NuMedii ultimately looks to license the drug to specialty pharmaceutical companies, as it has done with Aptalis Pharma. In its work with Thomson Reuters, NuMedii will own and be responsible for any resulting drug development programs.
“Our collaboration with NuMedii is an opportunity to combine the leading information sources available with novel analytics, data integration and biomedical expertise in a way that has not been done before outside of a laboratory environment,” said Joe Donahue, senior vice president, Thomson Reuters Life Sciences. “We are excited to be working closely with NuMedii to utilize this approach to speed the discovery of new drug candidates.”
Date: November 4, 2013
Source: Thomson Reuters
