9xchange joins forces with BenevolentAI to integrate its AI technology into its innovative biopharma marketplace

• Marketplace and partnership promote information sharing and collaboration across the biopharma industry to accelerate new drug discovery and development.
• BenevolentAI will provide its AI technology to evaluate drug repurposability and indication expansion in the 9xchange marketplace

Tel Aviv, Israel, 16 May 2023: 9xchange, a biopharma marketplace created for innovators to match, buy and sell drug assets, today announces it has partnered with BenevolentAI (“BenevolentAI” or the “Company”) (Euronext Amsterdam: BAI), a leading AI-enabled drug discovery and development company. The partnership aims to leverage BenevolentAI's AI-enabled technology to support decision-making related to indication expansion and drug repurposing for assets within the 9xchange platform.

The 9xchange marketplace is a curated, members-only biopharma marketplace that matches asset buyers and sellers and removes friction by anonymizing, automating and enhancing many steps required to get a deal done. CEO and Founder Anat Naschitz also co-founded and co-led OrbiMed Israel, where she built companies such as pharma spinout 89bio (Nasdaq:ETNB).

The power of BenevolentAI’s AI technologies will help 9xchange marketplace members, including biotech and pharma partners, VCs, investors, and select academic institutions, to investigate hypotheses on potential new indications for a given asset and ultimately transact based on these findings. By combining BenevolentAI's proven AI-enabled engine with the 9xchange platform, the partnership aims to uncover untapped potential in therapeutic portfolios, create new opportunities for drug discovery and pave the way for developing new treatments with unforeseen partners. BenevolentAI will provide insights related to the potential for repurposability and indication expansion of assets on the 9xchange platform, utilising an enhanced version of the workflows that helped identify baricitinib as a treatment for COVID-19 in early 2020. 

Anat  Naschitz, CEO & Co-Founder at 9xchange, said: "There is demonstrable value in deploying new scientific insights against existing, de-risked assets and bringing them to patients quickly and safely. Often, and increasingly given current markets, the right therapy is languishing on the shelf of biotech and pharma companies whose focus has shifted, or whose resources are insufficient to finance rich pipelines built when capital was abundant. As an investor and entrepreneur, I have experienced the inefficiency of finding the right match and completing a transaction. 9xchange was created to address all that and more. We are thrilled to partner with BenevolentAI, whose technology and capable team expand the solution space by adding repurposing insights, multiplying matches and value.” 

Matt Fujisawa, SVP of Strategy, BenevolentAI, said: “Many drugs have failed in one area, but have the potential to work in other indications in a safe and efficacious way. This partnership unleashes this potential in the discovery of new therapeutic applications. By combining BenevolentAI’s powerful AI technology with the 9xchange platform, asset owners unlock trapped value while buyers acquire assets with newly-identified indications that were previously unknown or unexplored.”