GATC's Novel AI-based End-to-End Drug Development Platform Identified New Drug Candidates for Opioid Use Disorder in Months Instead of Years

GATC Health enters clinical development on breakthrough compounds for treating fentanyl addiction and opioid use disorders

Drug mechanism is potentially first to re-wire and restore brain, addressing a root cause of opioid addiction and may have application for treatment of other neurological diseases

IRVINE, Calif., Oct. 6, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- GATC Health ("GATC" or "the Company"), a science and technology company revolutionizing drug discovery and disease prediction using artificial intelligence (AI), today announced that the new drug candidates discovered by its proprietary AI drug discovery and prediction platform to treat opioid use disorder (OUD) and fentanyl addiction have entered pre-clinical development. GATC is partnering with Christie D. Fowler, PhD at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) and global scientific testing leader, Eurofins Discovery, for the pre-clinical programs to determine the novel drug candidates' safety and efficacy in reducing opioid consumption, withdrawal symptoms and relapse.

To discover these specific drug candidates for OUD, GATC obtained addiction drug target biomarkers from Liquid Biosciences, a leading AI-based biomarker discovery company, and created a detailed disease model with its proprietary Multiomics Advanced Technology™ (MAT) platform. The platform then assembled and analyzed thousands of potential drug compounds, ultimately delivering a small set of high-quality, novel drug candidates that could directly affect the root causes of addiction.

These drug candidates are designed to support the brain's ability to change and adapt in response to experience, restoring natural levels of dopamine and reducing brain inflammation. The effects from this type of treatment have the potential to be safer for the patient and could provide a significant advantage in both short and long-term recovery.

GATC recently released a study showing that its platform can successfully predict drug success with 88% accuracy, and importantly, forecast drug failure with an unprecedented 84% accuracy rate. With vast improvements in both speed and accuracy, GATC has proven an 11x increase over the current industry lead optimization success rate of approximately 8%.

"We purposely directed our AI drug discovery and prediction platform to pursue the discovery of potential treatments for fentanyl addiction and opioid use disorder, diseases that are incredibly difficult to treat, an area of huge unmet patient need and one that has legislative, policy and tens of billions in funding support" said Jeff Moses, President of GATC Health. "Our platform, in mere months, has potentially uncovered the missing link in neurological disease treatments—a breakthrough discovery that has incredible implications for the opioid epidemic and other areas of medicine."

With the platform's new drug discovery, GATC has the potential to improve other treatments such as addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, major depressive disorder (MDD) and other neurological diseases. 

GATC Health's advanced AI platform reduces risk, time and cost in developing more effective drugs and treatments. GATC can analyze a massive amount of disease-specific data, with an AI solution that understands the core biology of a disease and can mimic a human environment for the discovery and validation of novel drugs. The Company's MAT platform can analyze 400 trillion biological data points in seven minutes and simulate biochemical interactions to accurately predict the response of a pharmaceutical asset to a specific disease. The MAT platform can develop 1-3 novel drug candidates in 3–6 months with the ability to support end-to end services across research and development.

"GATC's drug candidates for fentanyl and opioid addiction treatment focus on gently stimulating rewiring of the brain's emotional reward circuits, without causing the wide swings in neurohormone levels that typically lead to substance abuse," said Dr. Robert Sorrentino, Chief Medical Officer of GATC Health. "Essentially, the compounds remove the roadblocks to recovery and send a signal telling patient's body to start its recovery process and return to a state of equilibrium."

The opioid epidemic is one of the leading causes of death in the US and a leading factor in the country's declining life expectancy rate, with more than 150 Americans dying every day from overdoses related to synthetic opioids.^{1, 2} Drug-involved overdose deaths have also risen dramatically in recent years— jumping 30%, from 70,630 before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019, to 91,799 deaths in 2020.³

Recent settlements with opioid manufacturers have created tens of billions of dollars in opioid abatement funding, in addition to federal and state grants to combat the opioid epidemic.^{4, 5} A high priority in the U.S., the Biden administration has asked Congress for $42.5 billion for drug control programs.⁶

GATC Health Corp is a pioneering technology company using whole genome analysis and multiomics-based artificial intelligence to revolutionize disease detection and drug discovery. The company's patented AI platform reduces risk, time and costs for life science companies by digitally reproducing the human body to find non-obvious answers to biology's most complex questions. GATC Health is accelerating healthcare's transition to predictive, individualized medicine.

The information set forth herein is presented for informational purposes only and should not be deemed an offer to sell securities. This announcement contains information which the Company believes to be correct, including certain financial information and projections, but the Company does not guarantee as to the accuracy or completeness of such information. The Company reserves the right to modify or amend the information contained herein.

¹ https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/09/america-mortality-life-expectancy-pandemic/671350/
² https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/drug-overdose-data.htm 
³ https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates
⁴ https://www.naag.org/issues/opioids/
⁵ https://www.hhs.gov/about/news/2022/05/19/biden-administration-announces-15-billion-funding-opportunity-state-opioid-response-grant-program.html
⁶ https://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/briefing-room/2022/03/28/president-biden-calls-for-increased-funding-to-address-addiction-and-the-overdose-epidemic/

SOURCE GATC Health