Benzinga | May 25, 2021 08:26AM EDT

Recursion Announces First Internally-Developed NCE Advanced To IND-Enabling Studies To Potentially Treat Clostridium Difficile Colitis

Recursion Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (NASDAQ:RXRX), a clinical-stage biotechnology company decoding biology by integrating technological innovations across biology, chemistry, automation, machine learning (ML), and engineering, today announced the company has initiated investigational new drug (IND)-enabling studies for REC-163964, a first-in-class, small molecule toxin inhibitor for possible prevention of recurrent Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) infections and potential prophylactic use in high-risk patients.

REC-163964 is the first internally-discovered New Chemical Entity (NCE) development candidate identified by the Recursion Operating System and advanced to IND-enabling studies. This lead represents one of three structurally-differentiated candidates discovered by Recursion's ML-enabled Operating System for the potential treatment of C. difficile.

"While we honed our operating system on known chemical entities, our substantial infrastructure buildout for NCE discovery over the past 18-24 months is bearing fruit. Our first internally-discovered NCE is on its way to the clinic to potentially join our four known chemical entities advancing to phase 2 studies," said Co-Founder & CEO Chris Gibson, Ph.D. "Over the coming years, I expect a growing portion of our scaling pipeline will be composed of NCEs, thanks to our rapidly expanding in-house library of biological and chemical data, and our medicinal chemistry, digital chemistry, predictive ADMET and inferential search capabilities. All of our scientists and I are excited by the more than 165 billion inferences we are exploring today to build a 21st century biopharma company."