Insilico Medicine Announces the Preclinical Candidate for Kidney Fibrosis, Discovered Using its End-to-End Artificial Intelligence Engine

Picture 1 :  Insilico Medicine Announces the Preclinical Candidate for Kidney Fibrosis

(Hong Kong, 06 August 2021) – Insilico Medicine, a global company specializing in the applications of the next-generation machine learning technologies for drug discovery and development, announced that its AI-powered drug discovery platform has delivered the preclinical candidate (“PCC”) for kidney fibrosis. The preclinical candidate has the desirable pharmacological properties, pharmacokinetic profile, and demonstrated highly promising results in in vitro and in vivo preclinical studies. Insilico Medicine is working to advance this program to clinical trials.

“Chronic kidney disease affects 10 percent of the world’s population, and, unfortunately, it has no cure or efficacious drugs on the market,” said Alex Zhavoronkov, Ph.D., founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine. “Kidney fibrosis is the common pathogenesis in the progression of chronic kidney disease (“CKD”) and is a major unmet medical need. We are very excited to see that our AI-powered drug discovery engine has uncovered novel targets and novel molecules that have demonstrated preclinical efficacy in kidney fibrosis. We also used our InClinico engine to produce the actuarial models for multiple diseases driven by kidney fibrosis and are very excited about the clinical prospects of this program.”

Prof. John Kao, Head of BioMedical Technology Cluster of HKSTP, said, “Biomedical technology is a strategic focus for both HKSTP and Hong Kong’s position as an innovation and technology hub. We are excited to witness our partner company Insilico Medicine achieve yet another milestone, who has been relentlessly striving to transform the future of drug discovery and development through AI. The discovery of the preclinical candidate further enhances HKSTP’s thriving biomedical technology ecosystem and strengthens Hong Kong’s broader position as a world-class hub in this space.” 

Insilico Medicine achieved a significant breakthrough in February 2021 when it announced that its AI system identified a novel drug target and novel compound to treat idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (“IPF”), which is another fibrotic disease affecting patients worldwide with high unmet medical needs. What also made the discovery noteworthy was that this was achieved within 18 months and a $2.6 million budget.

Repeating that success, Insilico Medicine leveraged its PandaOmics to develop the target hypothesis for kidney fibrosis and used Chemistry42 to generate compounds with drug-like properties. The compound that markedly inhibited the development of fibrosis and significantly improved myofibroblast activation are critical for tissue repair and wound healing.

Insilico Medicine plans to complete the IND-enabling studies for this program in 2022.

“A good drug is easy to make, nontoxic, and affects the diseases we are worrying about. In practice, this is very difficult to achieve. This is where Insilico Medicine has proven to be a breakthrough. From my perspective, Insilico Medicine will advance the whole biopharma industry. People will witness how they design new drugs for new diseases with much less cost than traditional methods, and also much quicker.” said Michael Levitt, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 2013 and member of Insilico Medicine’s Science Advisory Board.

Founded in 2014, Insilico Medicine has raised more than $300 million. It plans to use the proceeds received from Series C financing completed in June to accelerate the development of drug candidates for kidney fibrosis and IPF and leverage its AI-powered end-to-end solutions for discoveries of more drug candidates.