Oncotelic Therapeutics and Vectara Announce Strategic Partnership to Transform Pharmaceutical Research with Large Language Model Technology

The companies are executing on the shared vision of utilizing AI for effective knowledge management in the pharmaceutical research and development industry.

AGOURA HILLS, Calif., April 19, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Oncotelic Therapeutics, Inc. (“Oncotelic”, “We” or the “Company”) (OTCQB:OTLC) announced today a strategic partnership with Vectara, a company specializing in innovative Natural Language Understanding (NLU) technologies, to accelerate the development of novel therapies for the treatment of cancer, infectious disease, and aging.

A LLM is an artificial intelligence (AI) system that uses deep learning algorithms to generate natural language from a large corpus of text. It is trained on a large text dataset and can generate new text similar to the original dataset. Large language models are used for a variety of tasks, such as natural language processing, text generation, and machine translation. LLMs such as ChatGPT took the world by storm forever changing how we do things.

The Challenge: One of the major challenges faced by scientists and researchers is the laborious and expensive process of sifting through massive research papers and publications to find valuable statistics or data points that could aid in the innovation and creation of new or improved immunotherapies. Publicly available artificial intelligence (AI) tools lack the required depth that subject matter experts need, despite their breadth in searching a large volume of data.

The Proposed Solution: To address this challenge, scientists must create meticulously validated corpora by combining private and public research, and then applying advanced NLU algorithms interactively with a conversational AI Research Assistant.

The Expected Benefits: The solution is expected to speed up pharmaceutical research to gain relevant and significantly robust results by accelerating the acquisition of insights, potentially leading to groundbreaking solutions for drug discovery and formulation.

Oncotelic’s use cases demonstrate the potential for Vectara’s innovative LLM-powered search in areas like life sciences and healthcare, where the demands for scientific accuracy limit the usefulness of most conversational AI tools. Vectara’s “Grounded Generation” ensures that responses to the questions posed are constrained only to the relevant and specific source data set.

“We are proud to work with a growing number of research & analysis firms that, through AI, are rediscovering their most significant competitive advantage - extracting value from their treasure-trove of research data through LLM-powered search,” said Amr Awadallah, Vectara’s CEO and Founder. “I am especially proud of our partnership with Oncotelic. It is rewarding to play a role in bringing much needed treatments to patients."

"We are excited to combine Vectara's advanced NLU technology with our internal AI discovery and development programs to revolutionize drug discovery and development. This partnership represents a significant step forward for both companies, and we are eagerly anticipating the outcomes from this venture," said Saran Saund, Oncotelic’s Chief Business Officer.

About Vectara

Vectara is an LLM-powered conversational search and knowledge discovery platform which allows businesses to have intelligent conversations over their own data (think ChatGPT but for your data). Developer-first, the platform provides a simple API and gives developers access to cutting-edge NLU (Natural Language Understanding) technology with industry-leading relevance. With Vectara’s “Grounded Generation,” businesses can quickly, safely, and affordably integrate best-in-class semantic search and question answering into their application, knowledge base, site, chatbot, or support helpdesk. Visit Vectara.com for more information.

About Oncotelic

Oncotelic is an immune-oncology company dedicated to the development of first-in-class RNA therapeutics as well as small molecule drugs against cancer and infectious diseases. OT-101, the lead immuno-oncology drug candidate of Oncotelic, is a first-in-class anti-TGF-beta RNA therapeutic that exhibited single agent activity in relapsed/refractory cancer patients in clinical trial settings. OT-101 also has shown significant activity against Covid-10. Oncotelic is seeking to leverage its deep expertise in drug development to improve treatment outcomes and survival of cancer patients, with a special emphasis on rare pediatric cancers. Oncotelic has rare pediatric designations granted by the US Food and Drug Administration for diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma through OT-101, melanoma through CA4P, and acute myeloid leukemia through OXi4503.

Oncotelic's Cautionary Note on Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, included in this communication regarding strategy, future operations, future financial position, prospects, plans and objectives of management are forward-looking statements. Words such as "may", "expect", "anticipate" "hope", "vision", "optimism", "design", "exciting", "promising", "will", "conviction", "estimate," "intend," "believe", "quest for a cure of cancer", "innovation-driven", "paradigm-shift", "high scientific merit", "impact potential" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Forward looking statements contained in this press release include, but are not limited to, statements about future plans related to the operations of the JV, taking the JV into an initial public offering or the success thereof, the progress, timing of clinical development, scope and success of future clinical trials, the reporting of clinical data for the company's product candidates and the potential use of the company's product candidates to treat various cancer indications as well as obtaining required regulatory approval to conduct clinical trials and upon granting of approval by the regulatory agencies, the successful marketing of the products; building and the success of our nanoparticle platform and the related success of launching the platform, the success of the launch of a company with a DAO infrastructure, the success of the entity and the plans surrounding the pet and animal health, the ability for the Company to register the tokens of Pet2Dao, the actual filing of a registration statement and approval of the tokens as registrable securities with the SEC through a registration statement, the ability of the tokens to be tradable or any value such tokens may have if they become tradable.. Each of these forward-looking statements involves risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially from these forward-looking statements or may not occur at all. Many factors may cause differences between current expectations and actual results, including unexpected safety or efficacy data observed during preclinical or clinical studies, clinical trial site activation or enrollment rates that are lower than expected, changes in expected or existing competition, changes in the regulatory environment, failure of collaborators to support or advance collaborations or product candidates and unexpected litigation or other disputes, taking the Company or its affiliates through initial public offerings. These risks are not exhaustive, the company faces known and unknown risks, including the risk factors described in the Company's annual report on Form 10-K filed with the SEC on April 15, 2022 and in the company's other periodic filings. Forward-looking statements are based on expectations and assumptions as of the date of this press release. Except as required by law, the company does not assume any obligation to update forward-looking statements contained herein to reflect any change in expectations, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise.

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