Singapore (Press Release) – KYAN Thera­peutics, Inc. ("KYAN"), a frontier bio­tech com­pany with a novel drug-dose com­bi­na­tion op­ti­miz­ing plat­form, Optim.AI, has entered into an ex­clu­sive li­cense agree­ment with Georgetown Uni­ver­sity for novel sel­ective Class II HDAC in­hib­i­tors. KYAN has already com­menced pre­clin­i­cal de­vel­op­ment of the lead can­di­date, which has been designated as KYAN-001, with early pos­i­tive re­­sults.

In vitro and in vivo stud­ies of KYAN-001 have shown high ef­fi­cacy for Multiple Myeloma and Prostate Cancer. The low toxicity and metabolic stability of KYAN-001 in­di­cates a better safety and tol­er­a­bil­ity profile than FDA ap­prov­ed pan-HDAC in­hib­i­tors which suffer from toxicity issues and side effects. KYAN-001 also uniquely in­hib­its HDAC4 nucleoshuttling to fur­ther drive its anti-cancer effects.

"We're very ex­cited to proceed with KYAN-001 because of its promising features and we are confident that we can identify optimal com­bi­na­tion ther­a­pies across mul­ti­ple can­cer in­di­ca­tions with Optim.AI," said Lisa Chow, COO and General Counsel of KYAN.

Masturah Rashid, Ph.D., Prin­ci­pal Scientist at KYAN, added: "It is sci­en­tif­ically recog­nized that epi­ge­net­ic drugs, in­clud­ing HDACis, have sig­nif­i­cant can­cer ther­apy po­ten­tial but are lim­ited in ef­fec­tive­ness as monotherapies. Utilizing Optim.AI, we have already pinpointed KYAN-001-based 2-drug or 3-drug com­bi­na­tions that outperform re­lapsed / re­frac­tory mul­ti­ple myeloma stan­dard of care ther­a­pies in in vitro ef­fi­cacy. We also plan to interrogate com­bi­na­tions with drugs that are ap­prov­ed for other in­di­ca­tions to identify even more optimal com­bi­na­tions that are nonobvious when relying on sci­en­tif­ic rationale."

Lisa Chow fur­ther stated: "The beauty of applying Optim.AI to the de­vel­op­ment of KYAN-001 is that we will be able to cut costs and de­vel­op­ment time while also tackling unmet needs. Many pro­grams are focused on bio­marker dis­cov­ery or subgrouping, which while im­por­tant, tend to re­duce the po­ten­tial mar­ket size and leave many patients unaddressed. Optim.AI's unique suite of pro­pri­e­tary analytics allows us to ef­fi­ciently and accurately eval­u­ate a vast num­ber of com­bi­na­tions, an endeavor that would be prohibitively expensive and labor intensive via other meth­ods. Therefore, we can find ef­fec­tive ther­a­pies for broader pop­u­la­tions."

KYAN plans to explore at least four can­cer in­di­ca­tions for KYAN-001 and antic­i­pates ad­vanc­ing KYAN-001 through to Phase I clin­i­cal trials by 2022.

About KYAN Thera­peutics

KYAN (a Delaware Corpo­ra­tion with a regional office in Singapore) uses AI-based tech­nology to re­de­fine each stage of drug de­vel­op­ment, from lead op­ti­mi­za­tion through clin­i­cal trials. KYAN's flag­ship plat­form, Optim.AI, employs ef­fi­cient ex­per­i­ments and relevant, real-time data to power its op­ti­mi­za­tion core. Optim.AI has been val­i­dated in more than 40 in­di­ca­tions/conditions, and has been applied clin­i­cally for dosage op­ti­mi­za­tion in solid can­cer and HIV. Clinical-stage appli­ca­tions of Optim.AI's com­bi­na­tion design capabilities in­clude a repurposed com­bi­na­tion ther­apy that cut tu­ber­cu­lo­sis re­cov­ery time in half, and an on­go­ing academic col­lab­o­ration which has suc­cess­fully identified novel, per­son­al­ized com­bi­na­tion ther­a­pies for over 30 lym­phoma patients who failed mul­ti­ple lines of stan­dard of care. In addi­tion to its in­ternal pipe­line which is on­col­ogy focused, KYAN also works with in­dus­try part­ners to op­ti­mize their assets and prod­ucts.

Source: KYAN Thera­peutics.