1 September 2020 - - UK-based drug development company Relation Therapeutics has helped launch Project RE, which will apply Relation Therapeutics' and its partners' technology to the identification of repurposed drug combinations as potential therapeutic candidates for COVID-19, the company said.

Project RE will focus on finding therapies to tackle viral entry and replication and is co-led between Mila (Quebec AI Institute) and Relation Therapeutics, with the overall scientific direction by Mila founder Professor Yoshua Bengio (Turing Award winner 2018).

The project will also create a platform to develop therapies that appropriately modulate the immune response through distinct stages of infection with oversight from Relation's Chief Medical officer, Dr David Roblin.

Funding for Project RE is provided by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to Relation Therapeutics.

Relation Therapeutics and Mila will aim to leverage the most powerful machine learning techniques currently being deployed in the world's largest tech companies and academia, to revolutionise computational drug development.

In order to coalesce thought leadership in the space, Relation has strengthened its senior leadership team and SAB with five key appointments: Dr Charles Campbell Roberts, serial entrepreneur, has been appointed chairperson; Dr David Roblin, COO Juvenescence and former Head of R and D for Pfizer Europe, has been appointed Chief Medical officer: Professors Michael Bronstein, from Imperial and Twitter, and Will Hamilton and Jian Tang, both from Mila, have been appointed to the SAB.