OpenBench Assigns Leads to OnKure to Advance Pursuit of Precision Oncology Drugs

SAN FRANCISCO, June 3, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- OpenBench, Inc., a pioneer in AI enabled success-driven small molecule discovery partnerships, today announced that it has assigned a library of promising lead compounds to OnKure, Inc., a privately held, clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company focused on the development of novel precision medicines in oncology, to advance OnKure's pursuit of an important precision oncology target.

The assignment is the consummation of a successful collaboration between the parties that deployed OpenBench's virtual screening platform to identify the most potent known chemical matter that specifically engages a novel binding site of a clinically validated cancer target. OpenBench received payment upon assigning the novel and potent chemical series to OnKure that met predetermined preclinical milestones. OnKure will optimize and develop these series towards the identification of a clinical candidate.

"OpenBench's collaboration with OnKure was perhaps our most rewarding yet," said OpenBench CEO and co-founder James Yoder. "OpenBench's success-driven discovery model complemented OnKure's ambitious pursuit of a target that would have been very challenging to drug using conventional approaches. We love working with great scientists on difficult targets to deliver leads with breakthrough potential, and this collaboration checked all the boxes."

About OpenBench

OpenBench is pioneering success-driven collaborations to bring rigor and efficiency to outsourced early discovery. In defiance of the prevailing fee-for-service paradigm, OpenBench bears the cost of virtual screening, custom synthesis, and experimental confirmation to ensure that the first dollar our partners spend in discovery is to purchase potent, developable leads. OpenBench's proprietary structure-based machine learning platform uniquely enables the success-driven model and has succeeded in finding quality, progressible chemical matter for 90% of targets we have taken on to date. To learn more, contact OpenBench at [email protected] or visit https://www.opnbnch.com.

Contact: James Yoder, [email protected] 

SOURCE OpenBench