Lucknow, Oct 18 (IANS): The Council of Scientific & Industrial Research and Central Drug Research Institute (CSIR-CDRI), Lucknow have announced a strategic collaboration with a Bengaluru-based startup to develop new therapeutics for the treatment of cancer using artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

The collaboration will entail the use of advanced AI and computational tools developed at Sravathi AI Technology Pvt Ltd, a start-up in AI-based drug discovery to design novel chemical entities (NCEs) with anti-cancer properties.

Sanjeev Yadav, Senior Scientist, CDRI, said on Wednesday, “There are a number of such chemical compounds available but finding whether they have anti-cancer properties manually, through the lab is a tedious process and takes a lot of time, manpower, and money. However, with this collaboration, CSIR-CDRI Lucknow will be able to do that quickly using AI technology.”

“By combining our AI capabilities with CDRI’s capacities in drug discovery, we believe that novel candidates (compounds) that are effective and safe will be identified faster and at lower cost,” said Dr Kishan Gurram, founder and managing director of Sravathi.

“CDRI has deep expertise in cancer biology and has a demonstrated track record of drug discovery and development. It is a nodal laboratory for CSIR’s pan-cancer mission programme which aims to deliver drugs to treat cancers with significant unmet needs, such as triple-negative breast cancer. This collaboration will help advance the goals of the mission”, said Radha Rangarajan, Director of CSIR-CDRI.

“CSIR-CDRI has developed 13 drugs from bench to market and transferred more than 80 process technologies to pharmaceutical companies. The institute is an integrated centre for drug discovery with end-to-end capabilities in chemistry, biology, pharmacology, pharmacokinetics and toxicology,” she added.