SUNNYVALE, Calif., and PITTSBURGH, Pa., Aug. 18, 2021 — Cerebras Systems, the pioneer in high performance artificial intelligence (AI) compute, and Peptilogics, a biotechnology platform company and an emerging leader in leveraging computation to design novel therapeutics, today announced a collaboration to accelerate the development cycle of peptide therapeutics through AI.

Leveraging the revolutionary Cerebras CS-2 system – powered by the world’s fastest AI processor – Peptilogics will be able to push the boundaries of innovation in drug design and novel peptide therapeutics. This cutting-edge exploration of innovation is a scientific game changer with the potential to meaningfully reduce the time from bench to bedside.

“Our mission at Peptilogics is to radically alter drug development and realize the full potential of peptides as therapeutics,” said Nick Nystrom, PhD, SVP and Head of Computation and Data, Peptilogics. “By partnering with Cerebras, we will be able to accelerate our research by orders of magnitude for important areas such as membrane proteins, including G protein coupled receptors (GPCRs). Traditional drug discovery operates on the time scale of one new drug in ten years. We aim to flip that to ten new leads in one year.”

Peptides are sequences of amino acids, essentially small proteins, that play critical roles in how our bodies operate. They offer relatively unexplored opportunities for therapeutics, conferring potential advantages over other types of drugs. The “design space,” or number of possible peptide structures, is vastly larger than could be explored through traditional drug discovery. AI – specifically deep learning – is well-suited to identify ideal peptide structures as drug candidates.

Through this collaboration, Cerebras and Peptilogics scientists will use the CS-2 system to develop and run advanced models to identify novel peptide therapeutics that meet specific biological activity and biophysical criteria. By accelerating the slowest step of the research cycle and training deep learning models on big data, Peptilogics with Cerebras will be positioned to deliver better therapeutics sooner. Peptilogics joins other life science leaders, including GSK and AstraZeneca, in leveraging Cerebras’ industry-leading AI technology to advance drug discovery.

“Peptilogics is operating at the forefront of AI-enabled drug design. With Cerebras, they are part of a select group of partners that share similar interests in pushing the boundaries of scientific research and AI computing to radically accelerate innovation for better healthcare outcomes,” said Andy Hock, VP of Product at Cerebras. “Cerebras Systems makes world-leading AI compute accessible and easy to use so that our partners at Peptilogics can test more ideas quickly, reduce the cost of curiosity, and achieve their mission of discovering peptide therapeutics in record time.”

About Cerebras Systems

Cerebras Systems is a team of pioneering computer architects, computer scientists, deep learning researchers, and engineers of all types. We have come together to build a new class of computer to accelerate artificial intelligence work by three orders of magnitude beyond the current state of the art. The CS-2 is the fastest AI computer in existence. It contains a collection of industry firsts, including the Cerebras Wafer Scale Engine (WSE-2). The WSE-2 is the largest chip ever built. It contains 2.6 trillion transistors and covers more than 46,225 square millimeters of silicon. By comparison, the largest graphics processor on the market has 54 billion transistors and covers 815 square millimeters. In artificial intelligence work, large chips process information more quickly producing answers in less time. As a result, neural networks that in the past took months to train, can now train in minutes on the Cerebras CS-2 powered by the WSE-2.

About Peptilogics

Peptilogics is a clinical-stage biotechnology platform company that designs and develops novel peptide therapeutics. The company is supported by investors including Presight Capital, Founders Fund, and Peter Thiel, who are known for their investments in companies such as AbCellera (NASDAQ: ABCL), Compass Pathways (NASDAQ: CMPS), SpaceX, and Synthego. Through its computational platform, Peptilogics is advancing drug discovery to uncover new, previously unexplored chemical design space, while ensuring biological viability and scalable manufacturing. Peptilogics’ anti-infectives pipeline includes a novel clinical stage anti-infective, PLG0206, that has been granted FDA Orphan Drug Designation and Qualified Infectious Disease Product Designation for its initial focus on the treatment of prosthetic joint infections, an urgent unmet medical need.

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Source: Peptilogics and Cerebras Systems