A look back on Absci’s huge year in 2022
Dec 30, 2022
It was a banner year for generative AI drug creation
2022 was huge for Absci. Despite the economic turbulence, we made tremendous progress on our mission to create better biologics for patients, faster. As 2023 gets underway, here’s a look back on a banner year for us.
This year, Absci refined our focus on drug creation — our roots in synbio cell line development give us both the experimental data and the lab validation to create an unparalleled AI drug and target discovery platform.
After the difficult work of reorganizing, we’re positioned to achieve our vision to deliver breakthrough therapeutics at the click of a button, for everyone. What I’m most excited about is the potential to be the first company to put a biologic into humans designed on a computer from scratch using generative AI — more on that very soon.
And in August 2022, we shared a manuscript detailing how we used our in silico methods to rapidly optimize multiple parameters important to drug development for the antibody trastuzumab. It was a nice demonstration of the power of our platform, and the preprint was in the top 5% of BioRxiv engagements. (Joshua Meier’s excellent Twitter thread unpacks the technology.)
Partnering to accelerate breakthrough biologic drugs
In 2022, Absci entered into collaborations for 10 new research programs – exceeding our own goals for the year. For example, we announced our collaboration with Merck in January, which could progress three targets with Absci eligible to receive up to $610 million in upfront fees and milestone payments, as well as research funding and tiered royalties on sales.
In July, Absci announced a collaboration agreement with a stealth-mode biotech partner, led by pedigreed biotech industry executives, focused on discovery and development of antibody-drug-conjugates (ADCs), initially for oncology indications.
We also unveiled our collaboration with NVIDIA, the microprocessing giant that revolutionized Silicon Valley. NVIDIA technologies will help power and scale Absci’s in silico machine learning pipeline.
Building a world-class company
Absci attracted more world-class leaders to our team in 2022. Chief Innovation Officer Andreas Busch is a pharmaceutical luminary who worked at Sanofi, Bayer, and Shire, where he brought 10+ drugs to market. Andreas was on our Board of Directors but was so impressed with us that he joined the team full-time!
Also, Dan Rabinovitsj joined Absci’s Board of Directors in 2022. As Meta’s VP of Connectivity, Dan has been at the forefront of tech for decades. He will help us scale our technologies and support our innovations to benefit patients everywhere.
In terms of our global footprint, Absci continued expanding beyond our beautiful US Pacific Northwest headquarters. In April, we opened our AI Research Lab in NYC, led by Chief AI Officer Joshua Meier, dedicated to training and bettering Absci’s machine learning models and computational pipeline.
You’ll also be hearing more about Absci’s new innovation center in Zug, Switzerland, south of Zurich. Led by Andreas Busch, our Swiss innovation hub will give us even better access to markets and talent across Europe.
Looking ahead
Looking ahead, 2023 is going to be another banner year for Absci. Soon, very soon, we will share where we are with de novo design, i.e. creating a drug from scratch. Things are moving at a fast pace.
We will continue to deliver on our existing partner programs and have plans to increase the number of partnerships in 2023.
We will also share our plans for developing our own drug creation pipeline in 2023. I strongly believe our platform will streamline preclinical development to support reduced time to clinic.
Bring on 2023!
As 2023 approaches, we at Absci wish our friends and colleagues a healthy, happy new year. We’re inspired to work alongside so many others to push the envelope in biotech and bring meaningful change to people’s lives. Let’s keep striving to change the biopharma paradigm from drug discovery to drug creation!