Today, the globally leading AI+Robotics drug and new materials research and development innovation platform, Jingtai Technology (02228), announced the expansion of its Global Strategy cooperation with the global biopharmaceutical giant, Pfizer, to jointly develop a new generation of molecular simulation platform to drive new drug research and development.
Zhitong Finance APP has learned that today, the globally leading AI + Robotics drug and new material research and development innovation platform, Jingtai Technology (02228), announced the expansion of its strategic cooperation with global biopharmaceutical giant Pfizer to jointly develop a new generation molecular simulation platform to drive new drug research and development. This cooperation aims to further integrate the precision of advanced physical algorithms with the speed and scalability of cutting-edge AI models, thereby comprehensively enhancing the efficiency, precision, and breadth of chemical space coverage of the molecular simulation platform, significantly accelerating the discovery and development process of small molecule drugs. Based on the existing strategic cooperation research and development achievements between Jingtai Technology and Pfizer, both companies will strengthen and upgrade the existing platform, creating a predictive tool that combines high precision with higher throughput advantages to meet Pfizer’s rapidly expanding small molecule chemical space and continuously upgrading research and development needs.
In a jointly published academic paper in 2024, Jingtai Technology and Pfizer demonstrated the technical advantages of their jointly developed and validated high-precision force field (XtalPi Force Field, XFF). Compared to the commercially available software with the highest market share, Jingtai Technology’s molecular simulation platform has shown superior performance in various research and development scenarios, including precise prediction of small molecule geometric configurations based on molecular mechanics calculations and high-precision affinity predictions through free energy perturbation (FEP) calculations. These core capabilities are crucial for accurately assessing key drug properties such as candidate drug activity, selectivity, and resistance. At the same time, this molecular simulation platform can cover a larger chemical space, expanding the research scope for precise molecular screening and rational design; higher computational throughput significantly reduces costs, enabling high-precision methods for large-scale candidate structure evaluation in earlier R&D stages, thus expanding richer R&D application scenarios.
In the statistics of predictive performance across more than 30 datasets and over 1000 molecular pairs, comparing with the commercial software with the largest global market share (corresponding to the deep blue “FEP+” results in the chart), Jingtai’s XFEP and XFF combination (corresponding to the light blue “XFF” results in the chart) performed better in high-precision affinity predictions (Xue et al., 2024).
After this cooperation upgrade, both teams will develop more accurate predictive models for Pfizer’s proprietary chemical space and expand the platform’s applications in the small molecule drug research and development field. Jingtai Technology will localize the deployment of its independently developed XFEP free energy perturbation platform for Pfizer, covering the full process from parameter customization to FEP calculations, thereby comprehensively empowering Pfizer’s drug research and development efforts. This platform aims to achieve higher precision, higher throughput, and better user experience and will provide Pfizer scientists with cross-scenario drug design and development support.
“Pfizer’s leadership in pharmaceutical innovation and deep scientific foundation provides strong momentum for the continuous evolution of the XtalPi AI platform,” said Dr. Jian Ma, CEO of XtalPi Technology. “This collaboration once again confirms that XtalPi Technology’s research and development platform, which integrates insights from physics with cutting-edge AI technology, represents a highly promising direction for technological development, and drives us to continuously develop more powerful predictive tools that will bring profound changes to the industry. Through in-depth cooperation with the Pfizer team, we will jointly build a new generation drug research and development platform, breaking the limitations of traditional R&D models, incorporating more potential and challenging R&D tasks within reach, and accelerating the delivery of groundbreaking therapies to patients worldwide.”
1 Xue, B., Yang, Q., Zhang, Q., et al. (2024). Development and comprehensive benchmark of a high-quality AMBER-consistent small molecule force field with broad chemical space coverage for molecular modeling and free energy calculation. Journal of Chemical Theory and Computation, 20(2), 799–818.
About XtalPi Technology.
XtalPi Technology (“XtalPi Holdings Limited”, stock abbreviation: XtalPi Holdings, XTALPI, stock code: 2228.HK) was founded in 2015 by three physicists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is an innovative research and development platform powered by artificial intelligence and driven by robotics, based on quantum physics. The company combines first-principles calculations based on quantum physics, artificial intelligence, high-performance cloud computing, and scalable and standardized robotic automation to provide pharmaceutical and materials science research and development solutions and services to global companies in industries such as pharmaceuticals and materials science (including agricultural technology, energy, and new chemicals, as well as cosmetics).
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