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Frontier IPAnnouncement

09/10/2017 07:01

RNS Number : 9929S
Frontier IP Group plc
09 October 2017
RNS REACH
AIM: FIPP
9th October 2017
Frontier IP Group Plc
("Frontier IP" or the "Group")
Portfolio News
Exscientia Wins Best Emerging Biotech Company Award
Frontier IP, which specialises in the commercialisation of intellectual property, is pleased to announce that its portfolio company Exscientia Limited ("Exscientia") was the winner of the Best Emerging Biotech Company Award at the OBN Annual Awards ceremony, celebrating outstanding achievement in the UK life sciences sector, held 5th October in Oxford, UK. The full text of this announcement is set out below.
Exscientia Wins Best Emerging Biotech Company Award at OBN Annual Awards 2017
Exscientia, the leading Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, is pleased to announce that it was the winner of the Best Emerging Biotech Company Award at the OBN Annual Awards ceremony, celebrating outstanding achievement in the UK life sciences sector, held 5th October in Oxford, UK.
The award was presented to Andrew Hopkins, CEO of Exscientia, in recognition of the company's outstanding success in applying AI and big data processing to accelerate drug discovery and development. This success is highlighted by the company's collaborations with GSK, Sanofi and Evotec, representing a strong endorsement of Exscientia and validation of its approach. Through these collaborations, the company is developing single-target small molecules as well as compounds with more challenging target product profiles, through a novel bispecific small molecule strategy (compounds with dual pharmacology in an integrated pharmacophore) and phenotypic-driven drug design.
This award was judged by a panel of leading figures from the UK life sciences industry.
OBN is the membership organisation supporting and bringing together the UK's emerging life sciences companies, corporate partners and investors. www.obn.org.uk
About the OBN Annual Awards - www.obn-awards.com
The OBN Awards 2017, now in their 9th year, celebrate innovation and outstanding achievement across the UK Life Sciences industry. Categories are broad ranging and include Biotech, Medtech, Synthetic Biology, Digital Healthcare and Investment. This year they also launched a new category, Best CRO which looks to recognise the critical support services provided by Contract Research Organisations across the pharmaceutical, biotech and medtech industries.
NOTES FOR EDITORS
About Exscientia and AI-Driven Drug Discovery
Exscientia is at the forefront of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery and design. By fusing the power of AI with the discovery experience of seasoned drug hunters, Exscientia is the first company to automate drug design, surpassing conventional approaches.
Exscientia's innovative platform enables breakthrough productivity gains as well as new approaches to improve drug efficacy. Novel compounds prioritised for synthesis by its AI systems simultaneously balance potency, selectivity and pharmacokinetic criteria in order to deliver successful experimental outcomes.
By applying a rapid design-make-test cycle, the Exscientia AI platform actively learns from the preceding experimental results and rapidly evolves compounds towards the desired candidate criteria.
Exscientia systems learn from both existing data resources and experimental data from each design cycle. The principle is similar to how a human would learn, but the AI process is far more effective at identifying and assimilating multiple subtle and complex trends to balance potency, selectivity and pharmacokinetic criteria.
As a result, the AI-driven process is more likely to achieve the end goal and to do this more rapidly and efficiently than traditional human endeavour.
Exscientia is collaborating with several leading pharmaceutical companies. In addition to Evotec, partners include Sanofi (metabolic disease), Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma and Sunovion Pharmaceuticals (CNS) and GSK.
Exscientia was established as a spinout company from Prof. Andrew Hopkins' laboratory at the University of Dundee.
For more information visit www.exscientia.co.uk
Follow on Twitterwww.twitter.com/exscientialtd
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For further information:
Frontier IP Group Plc
T: 0131 240 1251
Neil Crabb, Chief Executive
Company website:www.frontierip.co.uk



Cenkos Securities plc (Nominated Adviser and Joint Broker)
T: 0131 220 6939
Neil McDonald / Beth McKiernan 



Peterhouse Corporate Finance Limited (Joint Broker)
T: 020 7469 0935
Lucy Williams



Kreab (Financial PR)
T: 020 7074 1800
Robert Speed / Matthew Jervois

Notes to Editor:
About Frontier IP Group plc
www.frontierip.co.uk. 
Frontier IP specialises in assisting institutions and companies in the commercialisation and exploitation of their intellectual property. It establishes formal and informal relationships with sources of exploitable IP, principally universities. Its core business is building and growing a portfolio of equity stakes in spin-out companies by taking an active involvement in the commercialisation and funding of these businesses.

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