Veraxa Biotech AG (Nasdaq: VRXA) and Poland-based Ardigen S.A. announced an AI drug discovery collaboration to support target pair selection across Veraxa’s BiTAC pipeline of bispecific T cell engagers and antibody-drug conjugates. The partnership tasks Ardigen with developing AI-enabled computational tools and models to identify synergistic dual cancer target combinations suited to Veraxa’s Boolean AND-gate therapeutic architecture. Financial terms were not disclosed.

The BiTAC platform splits a T cell engager or ADC into two complementary precursor molecules, each individually inactive, that reconstitute a functional cytotoxic agent only upon co-internalization into cells co-expressing two distinct tumor-associated antigens. This conditional activation mechanism is intended to restrict on-target activity to cancer cells while sparing normal tissue expressing only one of the two targets — a selectivity problem that has limited conventional single-antigen TCEs and ADCs in development.

The central computational challenge Ardigen is engaged to address is the combinatorial identification and prioritization of dual antigen pairs that are co-expressed at sufficient density on tumor cells, absent or low on healthy tissue, and biologically compatible with the AND-gate format. Ardigen reports experience across more than 700 drug discovery projects and applies multimodal biomedical data integration to generate interpretable, scalable discovery outputs. Unlike conventional antibody programs that require identification of a single disease-associated antigen, Boolean AND-gate therapies require two targets that are consistently co-expressed on tumor cells but largely absent together on normal tissues. As the number of potential antigen combinations increases exponentially, computational prioritization has become an increasingly important component of early discovery.

The collaboration follows a sequence of operational announcements from Veraxa since its Nasdaq debut in June 2026 via a SPAC combination with Voyager Acquisition Corp. Earlier in July, Veraxa announced it had engaged California-based ATUM to initiate cell line development for its lead BiTAC-TCE program using ATUM’s Leap-In Transposase technology, a step the company described as advancing the candidate toward IND/CTA-enabling activities. In a separate business update, Veraxa disclosed that its lead BiTAC-TCE candidate, VXA-102, is targeted to be IND/CTA-ready by early 2028, and that the company’s four BiTAC-based programs are all focused on solid tumor indications. Veraxa has also reported in vitro proof-of-concept data for its BiTAC-ADC platform and has indicated that its FLT3-targeting monoclonal antibody VXA-901 and a HER2-targeting ADC program are available for external partnering. The Ardigen collaboration is structurally distinct from these manufacturing and development-stage activities, operating at the earlier target discovery layer of the pipeline. France-based Biomunex Pharmaceuticals has pursued a structurally comparable approach, announcing dual AI collaborations with Gordion Bioscience and Tangramed Biotech to identify novel bispecific target combinations for its BiXAb platform — indicating that AI-assisted dual-target selection has become a recognized front-end strategy for bispecific antibody developers seeking to expand combinatorial target space beyond conventional genomics-based approaches.

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