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The biotech company, backed by China’s Fosun Group and private equity giant Warburg Pincus, has begun human trials in the first half of the year for a drug discovered and designed by artificial intelligence.
Ensilico Medicine, founded by Latvian-born scientist Alex Zhavoronkov, says it has developed a novel treatment for a patient in China with the chronic lung disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF).
The company says the drug, INS018_055, is the first fully “AI-discovered and AI designed” drug to begin Phase 2 clinical trials and represents an important milestone for the industry.
“For Ensilico, it’s time for truth. . . But it’s a real challenge for AI and the whole industry should look at it,” Zhavoronkov said in an interview.
“Our company, and it’s a big, bold claim, can double the productivity of every big pharma company.”
Insilico is one of a new generation of biotechs that has raised billions of dollars to develop tools aimed at extending drug development. It’s part of a race by Big Pharma and investors to capitalize on the $50 billion market opportunity for AI in the sector, according to a Morgan Stanley report.
Zhavoronkov said Ensilico’s AI platforms could halve the time it takes to find drugs and lower the cost of bringing drugs to market — estimated by Deloitte at an average of $2.3 billion per treatment. Sanofi, Fosun and Johnson & Johnson are among the many pharmaceutical companies that have signed partnership agreements to provide access to Ensilico’s technology, he said.
AI platforms crunch vast amounts of data to quickly identify drug targets — proteins in the body associated with specific diseases — and molecules that can be turned into drugs.
Exyntia, Verge Genomics, and Recursion Pharmaceuticals have recently announced a number of biotech-derived drugs that have advanced to clinical trials using AI and machine learning tools. Insilico uses generative AI to rapidly select new drug targets and then design new molecules that can target a specific disease.
Zhavoronkov said that insilico AI could save two to four years on preclinical findings, depending on the novelty and complexity of the target. It has not spent much time in clinical development but has improved the chance of drug success due to better chemistry and target selection. Insilico used AI to recruit patients who were most likely to respond to treatment.
There are no guarantees that AI-discovered drugs or the platforms that create them will be successful, and some critics warn that the technology’s potential has been overstated. Last month, Benevolent AI, the London-based biotech’s AI drug discovery platform, said it would lay off 180 employees, about half its workforce, following the defeat of its lead drug candidate.
Eric Topol, founder and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, said that although regulators have yet to approve a fully developed drug using the technology, AI has shown great promise in reducing the time and cost of drug development.
“There is no lack of interest. “Every major pharmaceutical company has partnered with at least one, if not more, AI companies,” Topol said. Deep treatmentA book exploring the potential of AI in healthcare.
Insilico, which has dual offices in Hong Kong and New York, has raised more than $400 million from investors mainly in Asia and the US. It used AI platforms to select 12 preclinical candidates, three of which advanced to clinical trials.
Zhavoronkov said the company decided to take its IPF treatment into the clinic rather than partner with a big pharma company to control its flagship program and test its own AI platforms.
“It’s really important to be able to generate large amounts of data to make sure your AI is strong but also continuously learning,” he said. “We’re paving the way for new types of AI that can go end-to-end. . . So we go through the entire drug R&D life cycle,” he added.
Insilico has conducted Phase 1 trials with INS018_055 in New Zealand and China, showing favorable results supporting a Phase 2 trial. This mid-stage trial will recruit 60 people with IPF in China and the US to evaluate the drug’s safety, tolerability and early efficacy.
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