Boehringer partners Insilico for AI-based discovery of drug targets.
Insilico Medicine has partnered with Boehringer Ingelheim to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) technology to identify potential therapeutic targets.
Under the collaboration, Insilico’s generative machine learning technology and Pandomics Discovery Platform will be used to discover drug targets across various disease areas.
Boehringer Ingelheim Greater China External Innovation Hub head Dr Weiyi Zhang said: “We believe that Insilico’s exclusive Pandomics platform will provide huge boost to our ability to explore and identify drug targets.
“We look forward to using AI to significantly improve the drug discovery process and contribute to human health.”
Founded in 2014, Insilico utilises generative models, reinforcement learning and other machine learning approaches to generate molecular structures, synthetic biological data, identify targets and predict clinical trial outcomes.
The company created a drug discovery engine that analyses numerous samples and data types to identify disease signatures.
It can also detect the most promising targets for molecules that exist or can be produced de novo with the required parameters.
To date, Insilico raised more than $52m, including $37m last September.
Commenting on the alliance with Boehringer, Insilico Medicine founder and CEO Alex Zhavoronkov said: “Insilico Medicine is very impressed with the Research Beyond Borders group at Boehringer Ingelheim capabilities in the search of potential drug targets.
“In this collaboration, Insilico will provide additional AI capabilities to discover novel targets for a variety of diseases to benefit the patients worldwide. We are very happy to partner with such an advanced group.”
In December, Boehringer partnered with UK-based drug technology firm Healx to use AI for identifying approaches to treat rare neurological disorders.
The partners agreed to advance Boehringer’s drug discovery programme using Healx’s AI technologies and expertise in rare diseases and pharmacology.
