Drug Discovery

NEW YORK – October 29, 2026 -- The Huntington's Disease Foundation (HDF) has awarded $2 million across two 2026 Transformative Research Awards (TRAs), giving $1 million each to teams targeting the toxic huntingtin protein behind Huntington's disease (HD).

HDF typically funds one TRA a year. CEO Meghan Donaldson said the "extraordinary potential" of both proposals warranted funding each. The foundation attributes the expanded round to new major donors.

Harding team pursues small molecules to clear huntingtin

Dr. Rachel Harding of the Structural Genomics Consortium and the University of Toronto leads one funded collaboration. Her project, "Structure-Guided Development of Small Molecule Therapeutics Targeting the Huntingtin Protein," builds on a small molecule that binds directly and selectively to huntingtin.

South San Francisco – October 19, 2026 -- ACROBiosystems unveiled a 4-day sequence-to-affinity screening service, CHO-DirectTM, at its ACRO Innovation Day x AI on October 13, 2026, targeting the experimental validation bottleneck in AI-driven biologics discovery. The service closes the wet-lab loop in as few as 7 days when combined with developability and characterization work.

CEO Mike Chen told attendees at The Hangar that the company's customer base has grown to 13,000. He cited rising investor interest in AI-driven drug discovery as the backdrop for the event, which followed sessions in Zurich, Shanghai (May) and a September launch event.

Indianapolis – October 14, 2026 -- Carnyx Therapeutics Ltd. unveiled CNYX-005, an oral sleep candidate that increased total sleep time by roughly 1.5 to 2 hours in aged rats versus a control arm, as the preclinical-stage company moves toward clinical development.

The increase was driven primarily by more non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. Researchers measured sleep architecture using continuous electroencephalography (EEG) monitoring.

Carnyx hires Chris Brearley, M.D., as Chief Medical Officer ahead of clinical entry

Brearley brings more than 30 years of experience in translational medicine, clinical pharmacology and early-stage drug development. His prior roles include senior positions at Pfizer, Amgen and Serono. He has designed and overseen first-in-human and early-stage clinical studies, the stage CNYX-005 now approaches.

Brearley said he aims to translate the findings into a rigorous clinical development program.

Cambridge, Mass. – September 30, 2026 -- Insilico Medicine (HKEX: 3696) has nominated ISM1354, an AI-designed small molecule GIPR antagonist, as a preclinical candidate for obesity, type 2 diabetes and potential cardiovascular applications tied to obesity-associated heart failure.

ISM1354 improves on Insilico's earlier GIPR candidate ISM0676

Shanghai – September 25, 2026 -- Nutshell Therapeutics (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. has received FDA clearance of its Investigational New Drug (IND) application for NTS231, a covalent allosteric molecular glue degrader targeting NRF2, allowing the company to begin clinical development in the United States. NTS231 is the first NRF2 degrader originating from China and only the second such molecule worldwide to reach clinical-stage development.

Boston and Shenzhen – September 25, 2026 -- XtalPi Holdings Limited (HKEX: 2228) has submitted an Investigational New Drug (IND) application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for KQTD-126, a potential first-in-class gut-restricted pan-tropomyosin receptor kinase (pan-TRK) inhibitor targeting chronic intestinal pain in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).

KQTD-126 marks XtalPi's first proprietary pipeline candidate to reach IND stage

The submission represents the inaugural IND filing from XtalPi's internally developed pipeline, which the company disclosed in its recent interim results. It confirms the company's transition from a discovery-services provider to a clinical-stage drug developer built on AI and robotics.

Boston – September 22, 2026 -- Viva-Thera has nominated a preclinical candidate targeting the membrane-proximal external region (MPER) of HIV-1 gp41, completing discovery and optimization in seven months through a partnership with AI drug-design firm XtalPi (HKEX: 2228). The biotech, incubated and backed by XtalPi as a strategic shareholder, made its public debut disclosing progress across four HIV modalities: vaccines, long-acting small molecules, gene therapy and cell therapy.

XtalPi's AI screened 10 million compounds to isolate five validated hits

Using generative AI, XtalPi navigated a chemical space of approximately 10 million compounds to identify five hits with strong antiviral activity and favorable drug properties. Continuous optimization of these leads drove the program to preclinical candidate nomination within seven months, according to the companies.

South San Francisco, Calif. – September 20, 2026 -- Dualitas Therapeutics has secured a research collaboration and license agreement with Roche worth up to $1 billion, including a $36.5 million upfront payment, to develop bispecific antibody therapeutics for immunology and inflammation diseases.

Dualitas will screen over 300,000 bispecific antibody combinations for Roche

Under the agreement, Dualitas will use its proprietary DualScreen Bispecific Discovery Engine to functionally screen more than 300,000 novel bispecific combinations, in what the company describes as one of the largest-scale bispecific discovery efforts undertaken. Roche will take over all subsequent preclinical development, regulatory, manufacturing and commercial activities for candidates that emerge from the collaboration.

Cambridge – September 19, 2026 -- Nona Biosciences has developed HCAbLM, the first language model trained specifically on fully human heavy-chain-only antibodies (HCAbs), built from a dataset of 31.8 million HCAb sequences drawn from 73 independently immunized transgenic mice. The findings were detailed in a study titled "A foundation model learns the sequence and functional grammar of fully human heavy-chain-only antibodies," published on bioRxiv.

Nona targets the developability bottleneck in AI antibody design

Current AI antibody discovery is limited less by target-binding design than by manufacturability at scale, aggregation risk and stability -- collectively known as developability. HCAbLM was built to learn the underlying sequence grammar that determines whether an HCAb can fold correctly and progress into a viable drug candidate. General-purpose protein models lack this capability because their training data contain almost no HCAb sequences.

Boston – September 17, 2026 -- EMD Serono, Inc., the healthcare business of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, in the United States and Canada, has acquired two preclinical fertility drug programs from PostEra, a biotech firm built on artificial intelligence-driven small molecule discovery.

PostEra's Proton platform generated oral agonists targeting two hard-to-drug fertility receptors

The acquired programs target the follicle-stimulating hormone receptor (FSHR) and the luteinizing hormone/choriogonadotropin receptor (LHCGR), both used over two years by PostEra's AI platform Proton to design small molecule candidates for reproductive endocrinology. FSHR agonists were developed for ovarian stimulation in in vitro fertilization (IVF), while LHCGR agonists target male infertility and ovulation triggering in IVF protocols.