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The drug, dubbed ISM018_055, had AI infused throughout its entire development process. With Pharma.AI, the company’s drug design platform, the team used multiple AI methods to find a potential target for the disease and then generated promising drug candidates.
ISM018_055 stood out for its ability to reduce scarring in cells and in animal models. Last year, the drug completed a Phase I clinical trial in 126 healthy volunteers in New Zealand and China to test its safety and passed with flying colors. The team has now described their entire platform and released their data in Nature Biotechnology.
The timeline for drug discovery, from finding a target to completion of Phase I clinical trials, is around seven years. With AI, Insilico completed these steps in roughly half that time.
“Early on I saw the potential to use AI to speed and improve the drug discovery process from end to end,” Zhavoronkov told Singularity Hub. The concept was initially met with skepticism from the drug discovery community. With ISM018_055, the team is putting their AI platform “to the ultimate test—discover a novel target, design a new molecule from scratch to inhibit that target, test it, and bring it all the way into clinical trials with patients.”
The AI-designed drug has mountains to climb before it reaches drugstores. For now, it’s only shown to be safe in healthy volunteers. The company launched Phase II clinical trials last summer, which will further investigate the drug’s safety and begin to test its efficacy in people with the disease.
https://singularityhub.com/2024/03/18/an-ai-designed-drug-is-moving-toward-approval-at-an-impressive-clip/