US-based Insilico Medicine, backed by Fosun and Tencent, is expanding its research base in China to develop an AI-powered drug-discovery tool called Pharma.AI. Founder Alex Zhavoronkov likened the tool to an “Einstein” capable of advancing drug discovery into new frontiers.
Insilico Medicine is an 11-year-old US company backed by investors including Fosun Pharma and Tencent. The firm is training and testing its AI-powered drug-discovery tool, Pharma.AI, to “enable faster, cheaper and more successful drug discovery with higher novelty and confidence,” said Zhavoronkov.
“Biotechnology is a high-risk field like a ‘molecular casino’,” Zhavoronkov said. “Even with artificial intelligence, you can lose 90 per cent of the time.” Despite the risks, the company’s proprietary generative AI platform can read and interpret genomics and other biological data to create new drug molecule structures from scratch, rather than screening existing chemical libraries.
Zhavoronkov likened Pharma.AI to an “Einstein” capable of mastering fields from mathematics and physics to chemistry, biology and writing, pushing drug discovery to “new frontiers.” China plays a vital role in this plan, with the company expanding its research base in places like Shanghai to leverage local resources and talent.
Keywords such as lung disease, inflammatory bowel disease, Eli Lilly and ISM8207 suggest the firm is targeting specific conditions, though details are not elaborated in the current report.