Excited to share that Synteny is working with Lilly ExploR&D to optimise the developability of Synteny’s pan-KRAS TCR T cell engager
Synteny’s MANIFOLD discovery platform will benefit from Lilly ExploR&D’s drug-development expertise to inform the developability assessment of its novel pan-KRAS T cell engager candidate.
Synteny, a frontier AI company training foundation models of biological systems, is working with Lilly ExploR&D, the external R&D collaboration engine from Eli Lilly and Company (Lilly) that applies Lilly expertise and capabilities with the aim of accelerating the development and delivery of innovative therapies. The goal of the agreement is to optimise the developability of Synteny’s pan-KRAS T cell receptor (TCR) T cell engager programme. Synteny will draw on Lilly’s established drug-development expertise to strengthen the developability profile of its lead oncology candidate as the programme advances.
KRAS is among the most frequently mutated oncogenes in human cancer and has long been considered one of the most difficult targets in oncology. Synteny’s pan-KRAS TCR T cell engager is designed to direct a patient’s own T cells against tumour cells presenting mutant KRAS, with the ambition of addressing a broad population of KRAS-driven cancers through a single therapeutic modality rather than one mutation at a time. Through Synteny’s novel AI-driven design, the company has been able to engineer a TCR to selectively target more than one HLA.
The proposed candidates were designed on MANIFOLD, Synteny’s AI platform for biological discovery, which combines a biological world model, agentic orchestration, and a structured knowledge graph. The same platform underpins Synteny’s wider pipeline across oncology and autoimmunity. Bringing a novel biologic of this kind to patients depends not only on target biology but on developability: the manufacturability, stability, and translational properties that determine whether a molecule can be produced reliably and advanced safely into the clinic.
Lilly ExploR&D will contribute its drug-development expertise in developability assessment, complementing Synteny’s lab-in-the-loop design capabilities. The aim is to help Synteny assess the developability of the pan-KRAS programme early in its development.
“Designing our multi-mutant, multi-HLA candidate has resulted in a novel and promising mechanism to target mutant-KRAS, but the design challenge has been only part of the problem. We are focused on ensuring the format can be developed and stand up all the way to a patient. Lilly ExploR&D brings depth in drug development and pairing that with Synteny’s platform gives our pan-KRAS programme the best chance of progressing to the clinic .”
— Lilly Wollman, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Synteny
Lilly ExploR&D is part of Lilly Catalyze360, alongside Lilly Ventures, Lilly Gateway Labs, and Lilly TuneLab, which together support biotech innovation by providing access to strategic capital, lab space and technology, and research and development capabilities.
Synteny is a frontier AI company training foundation models of biological systems to enable scientific discovery. By integrating machine learning with large-scale experimental platforms, Synteny develops closed-loop AI systems capable of learning biological principles and guiding experimentation toward defined objectives. The company’s mission is to unlock programmable protein therapeutics, with a focus on TCR and HLA-directed therapeutics across oncology and autoimmunity, through self-learning, foundation-scale modelling of adaptive immunity.