Insilico Medicine (Hong Kong) has entered into an R&D pact with Arvinas (NSDQ:ARVN) to explore applications of Insilico’s AI technology to PROTACs.

By regulating protein function, PROTACS can optimize the sensitivity to drug-resistant targets, as an article in Signal Transduction and Targeted Therapy notes

Insilico and Arvinas will partner in designing treatment modalities for current and next-generation targets.

“PROTACs are a new protein degradation technology which holds huge promise in many diseases,” said Alex Zhavoronkov, CEO of Insilico Medicine. “PROTAC usually consists of a warhead that binds to the target of interest and a long tail that marks the target for degradation by the natural cellular machinery.” Machine learning can help with the warhead design, the tail design and help optimize the entire PROTAC, according to Zhavoronkov. The use of machine learning with PROTACs can ensure the warhead “gets where it needs to go and has the properties that would make it a great drug,” Zhavoronkov added.

Founded in 2013, Arvinas is a pioneer of targeted protein degradation technology and related therapeutic applications.

Insilico Medicine was founded in 2014 to develop an AI-based platform for pharma and biotech.

“We look forward to collaborating with Arvinas in this innovative field and to building a lasting relationship,” Zhavoronkov said.