By Sriparna Roy
Dec 8 (Reuters) – Recursion Pharma, which uses artificial intelligence to discover new drug candidates, said on Monday its experimental oral drug helped reduce abnormal growths in the colon in patients with a rare genetic condition.
Shares of the Salt Lake City, Utah-based drug developer rose 6% premarket.
The Nvidia-backed company is studying REC-4881 for the treatment of familial adenomatous polyposis, a genetic condition that causes abnormal growths called polyps in the lining of the colon.
This condition raises the risk of developing colorectal cancer, for which most patients have relied on surgery to remove the colon.
In an early- to mid-stage trial, 9 out of 11 patients maintained a durable reduction in total polyp burden, with a median reduction of 53%, 12 weeks after discontinuing therapy.
“This is the first clinical validation of Recursion’s AI platform, where we garnered unbiased insights to know that this molecule could work in this disease and now proving it in patients with this latest data,” incoming CEO Najat Khan told Reuters.
Drug developers are increasingly adopting AI technologies for drug discovery and safety testing, which experts suggest could reduce timelines and costs by at least half in the next few years, while also cutting back on animal testing.
“We’re one of the first to show these green shoots of proof points… it’s really a good sort of arc in terms of going from discovery AI to the clinic,” Khan added.
Preliminary data in May showed treatment with the drug led to a 43% reduction in polyp burden at 13 weeks on treatment in six patients.
The company is looking to expand its study to a broader population of patients aged 18 years and above.
Recursion will also engage with the U.S. health regulator in the first half of 2026 to define a potential registration pivotal study pathway, Khan said.
(Reporting by Sriparna Roy and Christy Santhosh in Bengaluru; Editing by Vijay Kishore)
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