Latest news with #AlexZhavoronkov

Biotech firm touts new AI lung disease drug discovery amid third Hong Kong IPO attempt

South China Morning Post

6 days ago

Business
South China Morning Post

Biotech firm touts new AI lung disease drug discovery amid third Hong Kong IPO attempt

Biotechnology firm Insilico Medicine said its new drug for lung disease, designed with the help of artificial intelligence (AI) , showed positive results in the latest clinical trials, as the company pushes for a public listing in Hong Kong. Advertisement Insilico found that its new small-molecule drug candidate, rentosertib, designed with its AI platform Chemistry42, was 'generally safe and potentially effective' for treating idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), according to its phase 2A clinical trial results published in the journal Nature Medicine on Tuesday. IPF is a chronic disease that causes lung tissue to thicken and stiffen, leading to breathing difficulties. During a 12-week study of rentosertib, which enrolled 71 patients in China, Insilico observed an improvement in lung function for those who received a higher dose, according to the paper. While adverse reactions related to liver toxicity occurred in some patients who were also taking another IPF drug, rentosertib met its safety objectives for the trial, Insilico said. The study showed the 'transformative potential of AI in drug discovery and development', paving the way for faster and more innovative therapeutic advancements, Insilico founder and CEO Alex Zhavoronkov said in a statement. Insilico Medicine founder and CEO Alex Zhavoronkov believes AI makes it easier for emerging countries to take part in drug discovery. Photo: Handout Insilico was founded in 2014 in Baltimore, Maryland, as part of the Emerging Technology Centre at Johns Hopkins University. The company announced last year that it had moved its global headquarters to Boston. It has a significant presence in mainland China, with a lab in Suzhou, and Hong Kong, where it has an office at Science Park.

AI drug startup touts promising advance in treating lung disease

Boston Globe

7 days ago

Business
Boston Globe

AI drug startup touts promising advance in treating lung disease

'This is one of the best results people have ever seen' for the lung condition, Insilico Chief Executive Officer Alex Zhavoronkov said in an interview. The promise of AI to make drug discovery more efficient has inspired billions of dollars in investment from large drugmakers and startups alike. While some have made progress with drugs selected or optimized by AI – with Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. aiming to launch one such drug within the next two years – early efforts to conceive and design treatments using AI have largely fallen short. Advertisement Plans are still being formulated for larger trials needed to substantiate rentosertib's effect and pave the way for regulatory approval, which is at least two years away under the best-case scenario. Zhavoronkov said Insilico has the funding for the trials, but needs to collect feedback from both regulators and potential pharma partners before deciding on the path forward. Advertisement The data will serve as a demo for Insilico's 30-plus programs, and help improve its AI model, he said. But data on some other metrics were inconclusive. Plus, the study enrolled only 71 patients, all in China, and ran for just 12 weeks. A few patients taking the drug saw their condition get worse, and several others developed liver injury, which Insilico researchers said will need to be watched in future trials. Zhavoronkov believes the side effects are manageable and the drug is 'reasonably safe' given it tackles a serious and deadly disease. By his estimates, it takes 4.5 years to deliver a drug candidate ready for clinical trials using traditional methods. With rentosertib, the timeline was 18 months. It will take much longer to prove the drug works in humans. Insilico is running a parallel mid-stage study in the US, and will continue to explore clinical trials in both China and the US. 'The speed of traffic is the same for everybody,' he said. Founded in 2013 to provide soup-to-nuts solutions, from disease hypothesis and drug optimization to preclinical testing, Insilico recently filed to list in Hong Kong.

Inside Insilico's bid to create the UAE's first homegrown cancer drug

Arabian Business

03-06-2025

Business
Arabian Business

Inside Insilico's bid to create the UAE's first homegrown cancer drug

Clinical-stage biotech company Insilico Medicine recently announced it will attempt to discover the first novel cancer drug developed entirely in the United Arab Emirates with just four scientists and its proprietary AI platform to complete work that traditionally takes hundreds of researchers and years of effort. The Abu Dhabi-based team aims to identify promising cancer targets, design new molecules, and prepare a complete preclinical data package within 18 months—a process that typically takes pharmaceutical companies three to five years and costs hundreds of millions of dollars. 'Our Masdar City centre already hosts around 60 AI and biotech specialists. By tasking four of them with a complete end-to-end discovery run, we aim to prove that any GCC nation equipped with cloud compute, wet-lab automation and local talent can create world-class therapeutics,' Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine, told Arabian Business. The initiative represents both a scientific experiment and a geopolitical statement as it has the potential to transform the Middle East's role in global pharmaceutical development while challenging fundamental assumptions about where and how drug discovery can occur in the AI era. Four scientists, one AI The team consists of two computational chemists, one medicinal chemist, and one translational biologist – a deliberately lean operation working alongside Insilico's proprietary AI system, They are targeting what the company describes as 'medium-novelty and genetically validated synthetic-lethality targets' for solid tumours –essentially, seeking ways to kill cancer cells by exploiting specific genetic vulnerabilities. In pharmaceutical terms, the team is working at breakneck speed. Their roadmap calls for finalising a biological target by Q3 2025, generating promising molecular structures in under 30 days, and completing the entire preclinical package within 18 months. Traditional drug discovery typically takes three to five years just to reach the preclinical stage. 'Humans still design strategy and verify results, but AI handles the brute-force search, learns from every experiment in real time, and steers us away from dead ends,' explained Zhavoronkov. His description evokes a chess grandmaster working with a silicon partner—humans providing intuition and judgment, the machine crunching through billions of possibilities. Why the UAE? The choice of Abu Dhabi might seem puzzling at first. The UAE has invested heavily in healthcare infrastructure, but it remains far from established biotech hubs like Boston, San Francisco, or Cambridge. For Zhavoronkov, that's precisely the point. 'The reason we chose the UAE is because we already have a base there,' he said, referring to the AI Research and Development Centre that Insilico opened in Masdar City in 2023 with support from the Abu Dhabi Investment Office. 'UAE scientists helped discover a drug but they never tried to take full control over the drug discovery program.' This initiative – which Zhavoronkov is careful to note is self-funded by Insilico, not UAE government money – is as much about proving a concept as it is about discovering a specific drug. If a small team in Abu Dhabi can successfully identify a viable cancer treatment, it suggests that any country with sufficient computing resources and a small cadre of specialists could potentially develop life-saving medications. 'Not just lucky' Insilico's approach builds on research dating back to 2016, when the company published one of the first papers describing how generative adversarial networks (GANs) – the same AI architecture later used in image generators like DALL-E – could design novel molecules. The biotech landscape is littered with AI companies that promised to revolutionise drug discovery but delivered little. Zhavoronkov seems acutely aware of this skepticism. 'Since 2021 we have nominated 22 development candidates, advanced 10 into the clinic, completed four Phase I trials and a Phase IIa – without a single clinical failure,' he said. 'Those numbers convert skepticism into evidence.' Asked why Insilico has succeeded where others have not, Zhavoronkov pointed to four specific factors: 'Pristine, well-curated data – quantity without quality is noise; a closed experimental loop where every prediction is rapidly tested in-house and fed back to the models; deep integration of AI engineers, biologists and chemists under one roof… and many experimentally-validated AI models that we know worked in real world.' In an industry where approximately 90 per cent of drug candidates fail during development, Insilico's lead drug, Rentosertib, recently showed positive results in a Phase IIa trial for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (a serious lung disease that causes scarring of the lungs). The company reported that Rentosertib demonstrated favourable safety and tolerability across all dose levels, with promising early efficacy signals after just 12 weeks of treatment. In January 2025, Nature Biotechnology published a paper detailing Rentosertib's journey from AI algorithms to clinical trials – the first comprehensive account of an AI-discovered and AI-designed drug from initial concept to human testing. The company is already planning to expand across the Gulf region. Insilico recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Investment and plans to establish an operation in Riyadh by 2026, with partial funding from Aramco's Prosperity7 Ventures. The company is also in discussions with Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman about potential expansion. 'If the pilot hits its timelines, we will deploy identical micro-teams across the region, accelerating the sovereign drug-discovery capabilities where it matters most,' Zhavoronkov said. The bigger picture Beyond regional implications, Insilico's experiment touches on a profound question: does drug discovery still need massive teams, extensive physical infrastructure, and geographical proximity to traditional biotech clusters? 'The goal is to have multiple AI-originated drugs approved and on pharmacy shelves, with a steady stream of new candidates entering the clinic every year,' he said. '[For Insilico Medicine,] success looks like regulators, payers and physicians treating AI-designed medicines as the norm – much like jetliners are now designed in silico.' Alex Aliper, Co-Founder and President of Insilico Medicine, framed the effort in economic terms, suggesting that channelling the Gulf's 'deep technology' investments into 'life-saving medicines offers the fastest way to diversify economies and extend healthy longevity' in the region.

Insilico Medicine CEO on Business Strategy

Bloomberg

22-05-2025

Business
Bloomberg

Insilico Medicine CEO on Business Strategy

Alex Zhavoronkov, Founder and CEO at Insilico Medicine, discusses the company's business strategy and the opportunities with AI drug discovery. He speaks with Haslinda Amin from the sidelines of 'JPMorgan Global China Summit' in Shanghai. (Source: Bloomberg)

First AI-Generated Drugs May Reach Market by 2030: Insilico CEO