Shuttle Pharmaceuticals has rocketed into the artificial-intelligence-driven drug discovery space via the planned $10 million acquisition of Molecule.ai.
Until now, Shuttle has been focused on developing therapies and diagnostics for cancer patients receiving radiation treatment. But the Maryland-based company positioned yesterday’s acquisition announcement as its way to enter what it described as the “$3.24 billion AI pharmaceutical market.”
The prize is Molecule.ai, a company set up by AI scientist ZT Zhang, Ph.D., and which sells itself as applying “cutting-edge machine learning models and large language models to molecular evaluation, drug-target interaction modeling, and autonomous drug discovery workflows.”
“Molecule.ai’s mission is to empower researchers with next-generation tools that reduce costs, improve efficiency, and unlock new possibilities in therapeutic development,” the company explained in the Oct. 9 release.
So far, Shuttle has submitted a nonbinding letter of intent to acquire Molecule.ai in return for $10 million in cash and stock. If the deal pans out, Molecule.ai has pledged to extend its AI platform to support drug-target interaction as well as add an agentic AI mode that “enables an automatic workflow for drug discovery.”
“Our vision is to empower scientists with the most advanced AI-driven tools to push the boundaries of drug discovery,” Zhang said in the release. “With Molecule.ai, we are not just accelerating the process—we are fundamentally changing what’s possible in the search for new therapies.”
Founded in 2012 by faculty members of the Georgetown University Medical Center, Shuttle’s top priority this year has been a phase 2 study of the radiosensitizer ropidoxuridine to improve the treatment of patients with glioblastoma. The company ended June with $4.8 million in cash following the closing of a private placement.