Iktos makes Makya drug design AI accessible on AWS Marketplace

Iktos has announced it has become an Advanced Technology Partner in the Amazon Web Services Partner Network and that its de novo drug design tool, Makya, is now available on the AWS Marketplace.

As part of the partnership, Iktos has also joined the AWS Independent Software Vendor Accelerate co-sell programme, making Makya accessible to pharmaceutical companies worldwide via AWS's cloud infrastructure.

The inclusion of Makya on the AWS Marketplace allows researchers and pharmaceutical organisations to access Iktos's generative AI software-as-a-service platform designed to support drug discovery. The tool provides molecule generation capabilities within an interface developed for chemists, aiming to streamline processes and accelerate the pathway to viable drug candidates.

Nicolas Do Huu, Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder at Iktos, commented, "Our partnership with AWS and the inclusion of Makya on AWS Marketplace represent a significant milestone for Iktos. AWS's secure and robust cloud infrastructure allows us to deliver Makya's advanced drug design capabilities to pharmaceutical customers worldwide, enhancing their ability to innovate and transform drug discovery processes. The global reach, scalability, and cutting-edge analytics services provided by AWS were key factors in our decision to collaborate."

Pharmaceutical enterprises are expected to benefit from Iktos's status as an Advanced Technology Partner, which brings advantages such as global accessibility, optimised IT infrastructure tailored for computational workloads, and enhanced computational power for running complex simulations and molecule generations efficiently and cost-effectively.

Among the early adopters of Makya is Teijin Pharma, which has implemented the tool via AWS infrastructure. By utilising AWS's global reach and scalable cloud resources, Teijin Pharma reports efficiency gains and improvements in accelerating the drug discovery process.

Jun Hirata, Director at Teijin Pharma, said, "Teijin Pharma has successfully implemented Makya through AWS to streamline our drug discovery processes. The synergy between Iktos's AI platform and AWS's reliable, scalable cloud services has allowed us to accelerate molecule design and potentially bring new therapies to the market more efficiently."

"In particular, Makya, whose user-friendly interface is crafted to enhance our compound design workflow, is available for users of all levels, including medicinal chemists and computational chemists. With its intuitive interface, this software allows for the design of rational compounds, as well as flexible and logical analysis and filtering, rapidly and iteratively. It prioritises the most promising compounds and significantly contributes to enhancing creativity and productivity."

Makya's generative AI system is specifically intended to enable rapid creation of diverse and novel molecules that are suitable for medicinal chemistry applications. The company states that the technical design is focused on usability and workflow enhancement for chemists in both research and computational roles.

Boris Bogdan, Director of Life Sciences at AWS, added, "We are excited to welcome Iktos as an Advanced Technology Partner to the ISV Accelerate program and support the global deployment of Makya. By combining Iktos's expertise in AI-driven drug discovery with AWS's scalable and secure cloud infrastructure, we are enabling pharma customers to accelerate their R&D efforts and achieve transformative outcomes."

The collaboration is expected to enable pharmaceutical companies to deploy Makya regardless of geographical location, making use of AWS's secure and scalable cloud environment and high computational capacity.

Teijin Pharma's experience as an early user demonstrates the potential for Makya to support accelerated discovery workflows, combining AI capabilities for molecule design with the reliability and flexibility of AWS cloud services.