Elevian is an emerging biotech company developing medicines that restore youthful regenerative capacity, with the potential to treat and prevent the diseases of aging. Its first target is the GDF11 pathway.
Insilico Medicine is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) company developing an end-to-end pipeline for automated target identification, small molecule generation, prediction of clinical trials outcomes and aging research. It is a leader in the fields of deep learning for drug discovery, biomarker development, and anti-aging interventions.
The collaboration will take advantage of Insilico’s generative adversarial networks (GANs) and reinforcement learning (RL) AI technologies to discover novel small molecules that target the GDF11 pathway, which has been demonstrated to play an important role in aging and age-related disease.
Elevian CEO Dr Mark Allen said: “We are excited to partner with Insilico Medicine.
“Not only will we leverage Insilico’s advanced AI technology to accelerate drug development, but we also share a common mission: to eliminate age-related disease and promote healthy longevity.”
Insilico Medicine founder and CEO Dr Alex Zhavoronkov said: “We are looking forward to working with Elevian. GDF11 is an exciting pathway and Elevian’s scientists are world leaders in this field coming from Harvard and other prestigious institutions.
“Their management has a solid vision and is committed to doing great research and turn it into the life-saving products in record time.”
In order to succeed in this endeavor, the companies will utilize state-of-the-art techniques in AI-enabled drug discovery. Based on biological and structural target data from Elevian, Insilico will identify small molecules that produce the intended biological actions utilizing deep learning technology.
Starting out with existing libraries of compounds and molecular building blocks, based upon iterations of virtual and biological screenings, the scientists will narrow down the list of potential candidates.
Subsequently, based on the results of previous iterations, Insilico will also provide a selection of novel de novo compound candidates, which will be synthesized by WuXi AppTec, a leading global pharmaceutical contract research and manufacturing organization. Using this approach, Insilico and WuXi have recently discovered novel small molecules for challenging targets.
XPRIZE Foundation founder and chairman Dr Peter Diamandis said: “My fund, BOLD Capital Partners, is a proud investor in both Elevian and Insilico. This partnership perfectly illustrates the convergence of biotechnology and AI, which together are shaping the future health of humanity.”
Insilico Medicine investor and Juvenescence chairman Jim Mellon said: “We are in the middle of a biotechnology revolution.
“Within most people’s lifetimes, the developments in the longevity biotechnology sector will allow us to live increasingly long and healthy lives, and provide one of the best investment opportunities ever.”
Source: Company Press Release