Vyant Bio & Cyclica Announce a Strategic Collaboration to Identify Compounds to Treat CDKL5 Deficiency Disorder

Vyant Bio, Inc. and Cyclica, Inc. recently announced a non-exclusive strategic collaboration combining Vyant Bio’s patient-derived complex organoid biology alongside Cyclica’s proteome-wide, Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled discovery platform to identify new treatments for CDKL5 Deficiency Disorder (CDD), a severe neurodevelopmental epilepsy disorder with no effective treatments or cure.

Vyant Bio’s human-first approach to novel drug discovery incorporates patient biology into the earliest steps of the process with highly functional, disease-based neural organoids, while Cyclica’s proprietary machine learning platforms marry knowledge and structure-based approaches to find novel targets, uncover new uses for existing drugs, and design new molecules with therapeutic potential. Combined, the technologies aim to identify, validate, and progress new targets as well as new and existing compounds for streamlined and de-risked CDD-based drug discovery.

Vyant Bio has deep experience in using human-based disease biology to ensure that early findings are directly related to the patients destined to receive treatments. They have incorporated CDD-based neural organoids into their platforms and are using initial findings to build a robust drug discovery pipeline.

“Last quarter we had launched commercial stage, novel disease models for CDD,” said Jay Roberts, CEO of Vyant Bio. “With this strategic collaboration we have the advantage of leveraging Cyclica’s demonstrated ability to identify unique relationships between compounds, proteins, cellular pathways, and diseases, as well as their AI-based drug discovery. These complementary technologies, combined with our additional pre-clinical expertise, will accelerate the identification of potential medicines and therapies to help children with this devastating disease. We continue to be focused on rapidly identifying small and large molecule therapeutics to treat central nervous system and oncology-related diseases. ”

Naheed Kurji, Co-Founder, CEO, and President of Cyclica, shares his enthusiasm for the partnership adding “Cyclica is building the biotech pipeline of the future, and partnerships with leading organizations like Vyant Bio are key to streamline the discovery of better medicines. Given the unique synergy of Vyant Bio’s in vitro screening approach to human disease and Cyclica’s multi-targeted and multi-objective drug discovery platform, we aim to bring novel therapeutics to patients suffering from CDD.”

Vyant Bio, Inc., an emerging global drug discovery company, is rapidly identifying small and large molecule therapeutics to treat central nervous system (CNS) and oncology-related disorders. With leading-edge capabilities in data science, biological and chemical sciences, engineering, preclinical discovery, and regulatory affairs, Vyant Bio capitalizes on in silico, human cell-derived in vitro disease models, and in vivo discovery technologies to identify novel biological targets and valuable therapeutics for patients. Vyant Bio operates two wholly-owned subsidiaries, StemoniX and vivoPharm. Vyant Bio is headquartered in the US, with offices in Europe and Australia. For more information, visit www.vyantbio.com.

From molecule to medicine, Cyclica embraces the complexity of disease. With deep roots in the industry, a first-in-class platform, and an innovative decentralized partnership model, Cyclica is creating medicines with greater precision for unmet patient needs. Cyclica’s work spans dozens of collaborations with large pharma and biotech as well as several joint ventures. Cyclica is a passionate team of biotech and pharma professionals, biologists, chemists, and computer scientists who live and labor at the intersection of our collective expertise. For more information, visit www.cyclicarx.com.

CDD is a severe neurodevelopmental epileptic encephalopathy disorder that arises from spontaneous mutations in the CDKL5 gene. Seizures in children with CDD can begin as early as the first week of life and occur daily. Additionally, individuals with CDD present with intellectual disabilities; delays in speech, cognitive, and motor skills; and characteristic repetitive behaviors. The prevalence of mutations in CDKL5 is estimated at approximately 1 in 40,000–60,000 live births.¹ There is, at present, no effective treatment or cure for CDD.