Pathos AI has signed a collaboration and co-exclusive licensing agreement with AstraZeneca to advance the investigational ERα PROTAC AZD4241 into early clinical development, using its AI-powered Foundry platform to optimise patient stratification and clinical trial design.
Pathos AI, a clinical-stage AI and technology company advancing its own pipeline of cancer therapies, has announced a collaboration and co-exclusive licensing agreement with AstraZeneca.
Under this agreement, the companies will advance AZD4241, a preclinical investigational therapy for patients with estrogen receptor-positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2-negative (ER+/HER2-) breast cancer, with Pathos assuming responsibility for the early clinical development of the asset.
AZD4241 is an investigational oral therapy known as a PROTAC (proteolysis-targeting chimera), specifically designed to degrade the estrogen receptor, targeting both normal and mutated forms of the receptor. Mutated forms of the estrogen receptor are present in up to 30-40% of patients whose disease progresses on standard hormone therapies.
Translating the full potential of this mechanism into patient benefit requires a fundamentally different approach.
By harnessing large-scale multimodal patient data and a proprietary AI platform, Pathos redesigns drug development end-to-end. The company’s capabilities span early asset identification, data-driven portfolio optimization and AI-native trial monitoring, with the specific early clinical execution for AZD4241 driven directly by its Foundry platform.
Accelerated by AI: The Foundry advantage
In complex indications like ER+ breast cancer, identifying the exact patient subpopulation, optimal dose and ideal treatment setting is a massive data challenge. Foundry was built to solve this problem.
Foundry utilises thousands of AI agents working in parallel, powered by the Pathos Oncology Foundation Model. These agents analyse complex biological, clinical and real-world data to intelligently design clinical trials, optimise dosing and match the right patients to the right therapies faster and more safely than traditional methods allow.
“The bottleneck in oncology is not finding molecules. It is proving they work in the right patients. AZD4241 has a compelling mechanism. Foundry’s job is to design the trial that proves it — matching this drug to the patients whose biology demands it. That is how we compress time. Patients are waiting,” said Iker Huerga, CEO, Pathos AI.
