Earlier this year, Insilico Medicine demonstrated its artificial intelligence programs could identify a new disease target, design a new drug and prepare it for clinical trials, all within 18 months at a total price tag of less than $3 million. Now, it’s done it again.
The latest preclinical drug candidate is aimed at kidney fibrosis, the tissue scarring that’s a hallmark of chronic kidney disease and can lead to losses in renal function, a condition affecting millions of people worldwide.
The new molecule follows up on one from February, targeting the lung disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, which Insilico has slated for development into a once-daily, oral medication to improve breathing.
“Approximately 850 million people worldwide, almost a billion, have kidney disease often being driven by or associated with kidney fibrosis,” Insilico’s founder and CEO, Alex Zhavoronkov, said in a statement. “We are very excited to see that our AI-powered drug discovery engine has managed to uncover novel targets and novel molecules that have demonstrated preclinical efficacy in kidney fibrosis.”
The former Fierce 15 winner’s AI suite includes PandaOmics, which helped narrow down the biological target in kidney disease, as well as the compound-generation engine Chemistry42. The company said that, so far, the molecule showed it could slow the progression of fibrosis in in-vitro studies and promote the activation of myofibroblast cells essential for wound healing.
“We also used our InClinico engine to produce the actuarial models for the multiple diseases driven by kidney fibrosis and are very excited about the clinical prospects of this program,” Zhavoronkov said.
Insilico plans to complete preclinical testing of this molecule by the end of 2022, before moving into human trials. And this past June, the company raised $255 million to support those efforts in a venture capital round backed by Warburg Pincus, CPE, OrbiMed and several others. This summer also saw the company ink an R&D collaboration with the generic drugmaker Teva.
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More recently, earlier this week Insilico announced it would work with China’s Westlake Pharma to help develop small molecule drugs aimed at COVID-19. The companies aim to put forward broad-spectrum inhibitors for key enzymes used by the coronavirus, and they reported positive preliminary results.