Exscientia Enters Binding Agreement to Acquire Allcyte

Clinical-stage pharmatech company, Exscientia, has entered into a binding agreement to acquire the artificial intelligence (AI) precision-based medicines company, Allcyte, it was announced in a June 15, 2021 press release.

Through the acquisition, Exscientia will expand its translational capabilities and Allcyte’s AI platform, which anticipates the effectiveness of cancer treatments in the clinic by analyzing the activity of drugs in live patient samples at single-cell resolution, will be expanded and extended into early discovery. Allcyte’s platform has been validated on multiple solid and hematological tumor types, as well as in non-cancerous tissues.

“Allcyte is able to demonstrate what therapy actually works in the individual patient with the most disease relevant screening platform we have seen,” said Andrew Hopkins, Exscientia’s CEO, in the press release. “Combining Allcyte’s platform with Exscientia’s technologies can redefine how drugs are developed, enabling integrated discovery and patient selection. Allcyte has assembled an outstanding team in Vienna and integration of the two platforms truly allows us to build our vision of patient-first AI.”

Nikolaus Krall, Allcyte CEO, added in the press release, “We are incredibly excited about the opportunity to immediately apply this technology to a wide range of drug discovery projects at Exscientia. This will also provide our team with the scale to expand our operations much more quickly to help provide important personalised, precision medicines to as many patients as possible.”

The acquisition transaction is currently under review by the Austrian regulatory process prior to closing. The financial terms of the agreement are for Exscientia to pay €50 million (US$59.4 million) in both cash and ordinary shares in Exscientia. Furthermore, Exscientia plans to expand the Vienna site as its European Union hub.

Source: Exscientia