Drug Discovery and Development

  • Home Drug Discovery and Development
  • Drug Discovery
  • Women in Pharma and Biotech
  • Oncology
  • Neurological Disease
  • Infectious Disease
  • Resources
    • Video features
    • Podcast
    • Voices
    • Webinars
  • Pharma 50
    • 2025 Pharma 50
    • 2024 Pharma 50
    • 2023 Pharma 50
    • 2022 Pharma 50
    • 2021 Pharma 50
  • Advertise
  • SUBSCRIBE

Insilico Medicine AI yields kidney fibrosis drug candidate

The company also recently closed a $255 million Series C funding round.

By Brian Buntz | August 5, 2021

Insilico Medicine Insilico Medicine (Hong Kong) has announced that its AI-enabled drug discovery platform has yielded a preclinical candidate for kidney fibrosis.

The company says the preclinical candidate has optimal pharmacological and pharmacokinetic profiles. In addition, it has successfully tested the candidate in both in vitro and in vivo preclinical studies. 

Insilico Medicine aims to advance the candidate to clinical trials, including those required for an Investigational New Drug application by 2022. 

CDC estimates that some 15% of U.S. have chronic kidney disease. The disease, unfortunately, has “no cures or efficacious drugs on the market,” said Alex Zhavoronkov, founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine. “Kidney fibrosis is the common pathogenesis in the progression of chronic kidney disease and is a major unmet medical need.” 

Insilico Medicine has used its create actuarial models for multiple diseases related to kidney fibrosis. 

Kidney fibrosis and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis are core focus areas of the company. 

In February, the company announced that its machine learning technology identified a novel drug target and compound to treat idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a disease with a significant quality of life impact. 

The strategy the company uses for drug discovery is novel in that it is “frictionless highly-parallel distributed discovery,” according to Zhavoronkov.

To identify a candidate for kidney fibrosis, the company used its PandaOmics data analysis and visualization platform. In addition, it used its Chemistry42 automated machine learning platform for drug design to develop compounds with drug-like properties. 

“We start with several target hypotheses for a disease of interest that come out of our PandaOmics AI engine, evaluate assay availability for every target, conduct the fastest and easiest experiments to cut off the hypotheses that clearly do not work (and feed that data back into the engine for re-training), and design sets of diverse molecules for these targets using the Chemistry42 chemistry engine, synthesize and send the molecules for test in these assays,” Zhavoronkov said. When an assay fails, the company feeds the data back into its AI engine, but the parallel programs continue to advance. “For every one of these, we use our InClinico clinical trial outcome prediction engine to predict the probability of clinical trial success and cut out the programs where we are less likely to succeed,” he added.

The winning programs from this process go on to face multiple in vitro and animal experiments. “We work with many contract research organizations (CROs) that conduct the experiments and all factors need to be evaluated,” Zhavoronkov said. “Usually, you get several that fit the criteria for a preclinical candidate,” he added. “These programs get reviewed by human experts and key opinion leaders in the field with experience in clinical development to select which one to nominate as a preclinical candidate to start the IND-enabling studies.”

In early tests, the preclinical candidate for kidney fibrosis reduced the development of fibrosis while bolstering myofibroblast activation. 

To date, Insilico Medicine has raised more than $300 million in funding since it was founded in 2014. 

The company also recently announced a partnership with Usynova related to small molecule drug development. 


Filed Under: clinical trials, Drug Discovery, Nephrology/urology
Tagged With: Chemistry42, chronic kidney disease, Insilico Medicine, kidney fibrosis, PandaOmics, Usynova
 

About The Author

Brian Buntz

As the pharma and biotech editor at WTWH Media, Brian has almost two decades of experience in B2B media, with a focus on healthcare and technology. While he has long maintained a keen interest in AI, more recently Brian has made making data analysis a central focus, and is exploring tools ranging from NLP and clustering to predictive analytics.

Throughout his 18-year tenure, Brian has covered an array of life science topics, including clinical trials, medical devices, and drug discovery and development. Prior to WTWH, he held the title of content director at Informa, where he focused on topics such as connected devices, cybersecurity, AI and Industry 4.0. A dedicated decade at UBM saw Brian providing in-depth coverage of the medical device sector. Engage with Brian on LinkedIn or drop him an email at bbuntz@wtwhmedia.com.

Related Articles Read More >

Zoliflodacin wins FDA nod for treatment of gonorrhea
FDA approved ENFLONSIA for the prevention of RSV in Infants
First clinical study results of Dupixent for atopic dermatitis in patients with darker skin tones 
Labcorp widens precision oncology toolkit, aims to speed drug-trial enrollment
“ddd
EXPAND YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND STAY CONNECTED
Get the latest news and trends happening now in the drug discovery and development industry.

MEDTECH 100 INDEX

Medtech 100 logo
Market Summary > Current Price
The MedTech 100 is a financial index calculated using the BIG100 companies covered in Medical Design and Outsourcing.
Drug Discovery and Development
  • MassDevice
  • DeviceTalks
  • Medtech100 Index
  • Medical Design Sourcing
  • Medical Design & Outsourcing
  • Medical Tubing + Extrusion
  • Subscribe to our E-Newsletter
  • Contact Us
  • About Us
  • R&D World
  • Drug Delivery Business News
  • Pharmaceutical Processing World

Copyright © 2025 WTWH Media LLC. All Rights Reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media
Privacy Policy | Advertising | About Us

Search Drug Discovery & Development

  • Home Drug Discovery and Development
  • Drug Discovery
  • Women in Pharma and Biotech
  • Oncology
  • Neurological Disease
  • Infectious Disease
  • Resources
    • Video features
    • Podcast
    • Voices
    • Webinars
  • Pharma 50
    • 2025 Pharma 50
    • 2024 Pharma 50
    • 2023 Pharma 50
    • 2022 Pharma 50
    • 2021 Pharma 50
  • Advertise
  • SUBSCRIBE