Black Diamond Therapeutics and OpenEye Scientific Announce Collaboration to Expand MAP Drug Discovery Platform
Strategic partnership between Black Diamond and OpenEye aims to accelerate drug discovery efforts through cloud-based molecular dynamics technology
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. and SANTA FE, N.M., Sept. 21, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Black Diamond Therapeutics, a precision oncology medicine company pioneering the discovery and development of MasterKey therapies, and OpenEye Scientific, a leader in computational molecular design, today announced that they are entering into a strategic partnership incorporating OpenEye’s Orion® molecular design platform into Black Diamond’s proprietary Mutation-Allostery-Pharmacology (MAP) drug discovery engine to advance Black Diamond’s efforts to develop MasterKey inhibitor cancer therapies.
OpenEye’s Orion Software-as-a-Service platform will enable Black Diamond to perform rapid simulations and analysis of protein motion through Orion’s powerful combination of a high-performance compute facility, scientific development environment, and browser-based analysis and collaboration tools. Black Diamond and OpenEye will collaborate to co-develop enhanced-sampling capabilities designed to deliver information on an accelerated time scale. With the increased capability to model large and complex systems, Black Diamond will enhance its ability to discover mutant selective MasterKey therapies that target families of oncogenic mutations.
“Our proprietary MAP drug discovery engine combines computational and experimental techniques to identify, validate, and aggregate oncogenic mutations, rendering them actionable by a single MasterKey inhibitor,” said David M. Epstein, PhD, Co-Founder, President and CEO of Black Diamond Therapeutics. “Complementing our expertise in cancer genomics, protein function and medicinal chemistry, we believe our work with OpenEye will enable the expansion of Black Diamond’s therapeutic pipeline by enhancing a molecular understanding of intact, full-length oncoproteins activated by a diverse array of driver mutations.”
OpenEye’s Orion molecular design platform integrated with Amazon Web Services’ Cloud environment allows Black Diamond to pursue scalable and parallel analyses of the conformational states of families of mutant oncogenes. The deployment of these large-scale perturbations provides Black Diamond with detailed structural and dynamic information on target proteins to guide drug discovery efforts. The arrangement between OpenEye and Black Diamond involves an upfront payment and potential downstream economics resulting from select Black Diamond products for OpenEye.
“We are beginning to see the marriage of computation and genomics not just through sequence analysis, but at the structural level,” said Anthony Nicholls, CEO and Founder of OpenEye Scientific. “This shift is being hastened by the Cloud and its democratization of large-scale computation. We’re very proud to be able to work with Black Diamond to combine molecular simulation on our cloud platform, Orion, with their MAP drug discovery engine to accelerate their search for novel cancer therapeutics.”
About Black Diamond Therapeutics, Inc.
Black Diamond Therapeutics is a precision oncology medicine company pioneering the discovery of small molecule, MasterKey therapies. Black Diamond targets undrugged mutations in patients with genetically defined cancers. Black Diamond is built upon a deep understanding of cancer genetics, protein structure and function, and medicinal chemistry. The Company’s proprietary technology platform and drug discovery engine, the Mutation-Allostery-Pharmacology (MAP) platform, is designed to allow Black Diamond to analyze population-level genetic sequencing data to identify oncogenic mutations that promote cancer across tumor types, group these mutations into families, and develop a single small molecule therapy that targets a specific family of mutations, termed a MasterKey therapy. Black Diamond was founded by David M. Epstein, Ph.D., and Elizabeth Buck, Ph.D. For more information, please visit
Forward-Looking Statements
Statements contained in this press release regarding matters that are not historical facts are “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Because such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such statements include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the potential benefits of the Company’s partnership with OpenEye, including the Company’s use of the Orion platform to identify additional MasterKey therapies. Any forward-looking statements in this statement are based on management’s current expectations of future events and are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially and adversely from those set forth in or implied by such forward-looking statements. Risks that contribute to the uncertain nature of the forward-looking statements include: the success, cost, and timing of the Company’s product candidate development activities and planned IND-enabling studies and clinical trials, the Company’s ability to execute on its strategy, regulatory developments in the United States, the Company’s ability to fund operations, and the impact that the current COVID-19 pandemic will have on the Company’s clinical trials and pre-clinical studies, supply chain, and operations, as well as those risks and uncertainties set forth in its 2020 Annual Report on Form 10-K filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission and its other filings filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. All forward-looking statements contained in this press release speak only as of the date on which they were made. The Company undertakes no obligation to update such statements to reflect events that occur or circumstances that exist after the date on which they were made.
About OpenEye Scientific
OpenEye Scientific is an industry leader in computational molecular design, based on decades of delivering rapid, robust, and scalable software, toolkits, and technology and design services. Our scientific, physics-based approach to molecular design historically focused on molecular shape and electrostatic potential to inform and guide molecular discovery and optimization. OpenEye now has integrated its applications and toolkits into Orion®, the only cloud-native, fully integrated molecular design platform. Combining unlimited computation and storage with powerful tools for data sharing, visualization and analysis in an open development platform, Orion offers unprecedented capabilities for the advancement of pharmaceuticals, biologics, agrochemicals, and flavors and fragrances. Founded in 1997, OpenEye is a privately held company headquartered in Santa Fe, N.M., with offices in Boston, Mass.; Cologne, Germany; and Tokyo, Japan. For more information, go to .
Contacts:
For Black Diamond Therapeutics
For Investors:
Natalie Wildenradt
Black Diamond Therapeutics
For Media:
Kathy Vincent
(310) 403-8951
For OpenEye Scientific
Ryan Fitzgerald
Punch PR
