Insilico Medicine and Fosun Pharma Announce a Strategic, AI-driven Drug Discovery and Development Collaboration to Jointly Advance Multiple Targets

Photo 1: Insilico Medicine and Fosun Pharma announced the strategic collaboration to advance the discovery and development of drugs targeting a number of different targets globally through the use of AI technology.

(Hong Kong, 11 January 2022) Insilico Medicine ("Insilico"), an end-to-end artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery and development company and Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical (Group) Co., Ltd ("Fosun Pharma"; Stock Code: 600196.SH, 02196.HK), a leading innovation-driven international healthcare group in China entered into a collaboration agreement to advance the discovery and development of drugs targeting a number of different targets globally through the use of AI technology.

This strategic collaboration includes an AI-driven drug discovery research and development (R&D) collaboration on four biological targets, as well as the co-development of Insilico’s QPCTL program. Insilico will receive a total upfront payment of USD 13 million for the R&D collaboration projects and the co-development of the QPCTL program, potential milestone-based payments, and share commercialization profits from the QPCTL program. In addition, Fosun Pharma will make an equity investment in Insilico.

“In partnering with Fosun Pharma, a leading pharmaceutical company, we begin a new era of AI-powered end-to-end drug discovery and development as human-machine collaboration becoming the new normal in precision drug discovery and development. We previously demonstrated that AI can be used to discover novel targets and generate novel molecules that can be tested in humans in record time. Now, we are partnering with one of the leading scientific teams in the pharmaceutical industry to take this technology to the next level for the benefit of patients worldwide”, said Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, Founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine. 

“We are pleased to enter into strategic collaboration with Insilico. Fosun Pharma is committed to promoting innovative R&D, and is oriented towards fulfilling unmet clinical needs and improving products’ accessibility. We look forward to working with Insilico to leverage the technological and clinical development strengths of both companies, jointly improving the efficiency of innovative drug R&D, and benefiting more patients worldwide," said Yifang Wu, Chairman and CEO of Fosun Pharma.

The collaboration aims to combine Insilico’s end-to-end AI-driven drug discovery platforms and Fosun Pharma’s clinical development and commercial expertise to discover and develop a portfolio of novel therapeutics. Pursuant to the collaboration agreement, Insilico will take responsibility for delivering a preclinical candidate for the QPCTL program and advancing it to IND stage, after which, Fosun Pharma will then conduct human clinical studies and co-develop the candidate globally. In parallel, Fosun Pharma’s R&D team will nominate four therapeutic targets to be assessed by Insilico’s AI platform and R&D team, who are responsible of advancing drug candidates to IND stage. 

As part of the collaboration, Fosun Pharma will secure access to Insilico’s PandaOmics and Chemistry42 platforms in order to advance Fosun Pharma’s internal AI-powered discovery and development efforts. 

“The collaboration between Insilico Medicine and Fosun Pharma create great synergies, bringing together leading lights in upstream AI-assisted drug discovery, and downstream clinical development. With such scale and depth of collaboration, we eagerly anticipate to see what impacts it will bring clinically.” said Prof. John Kao, Head of Institute for Translational Research of HKSTP.