Israeli computational biology company turns to Google Cloud for AI model-building power

Israeli computational biology company Evogene is looking to the clouds to secure the computational power it needs to develop an AI model for designing small molecules.

In a new partnership, Evogene will use Google Cloud’s Vertex AI and the graphics processing units on Google Compute Engine—plus the Google Cloud Storage service—to create an AI foundation model that can create new small molecules, the company said in an Oct. 31 release.

Evogene then plans to use its ChemPass AI technology platform to develop new compounds for therapeutics, sustainable crop protection and other life-science applications, the firm said.

“By harnessing the power of Google Cloud, Evogene's ChemPass AI has the potential to revolutionize small molecule design,” Google Cloud Israel’s managing director, Boaz Maoz, said in the release.

While the generative AI approach for designing proteins has exploded in the wake of Google DeepMind’s AlphaFold successfully predicting protein structures, similar efforts for small molecules have yet to truly take off.

Companies like Xaira Therapeutics, Vilya Therapeutics and the newly launched Archon Biosciences are building models to design proteins based on the work of David Baker, Ph.D., who recently won a Nobel Prize for his pioneering work in the field.

Evogene spun out of another Israeli computational biology company, Compugen, in 2002. In addition to small molecules, the company also has tech platforms for discovering and developing new products from microbes and from genes and genomes.