AI Found Medicines Which Could Be Sold In Markets Soon. Here's What You Need To Know!

Recently, the very first drug completely created by artificial intelligence has been welcomed for the purpose of clinical trials with human patients.

A biotech startup based in Hong Kong, Insilico Medicine, generated the drug, INS018_055, for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis with more than $400 million in funding. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is a serious disease that leads to scarring in the lungs of the patient. This disease, at present, affects approximately 100,000 people in the United States. The disease is hazardous in nature and can cause death in the time frame of two to five years in case it is left untreated, as per the National Institutes of Health.

CEO and founder of Insilico Medicine, Alex Zhavoronkov expressed that it is the very first completely generative AI drug that has reached the stage of clinical trials for humans, particularly the Phase II trials with patients. The CEO further said that many other AI-designed drugs are also in trials, the one by Insilico Medicine is the very first one that has both a fresh AI-generated design and a new AI-discovered target.

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The Journey

The discovery of the new drug commenced in the year 2020. The expectations were to design a "moonshot" medicine to fight the challenges that come up with the treatment of the condition.

Zhavoronkov further stated that Insilico intends to pay attention to the IPF in part because of the implication of the condition in aging. The company, however, has two more drugs that are in part generated by Artificial Intelligence in the clinical stage.

One of them is a COVID-19 drug in the first phase of clinical trials. The second one is a cancer drug that has recently got the approval of the FDA to commence clinical trials.

Zhavoronkov expressed that during the launch of the company, the team was focussing on the algorithms- working on the technology that could actually design novel molecules. He further expressed that at that time he never imagined that he would be taking his very own AI drugs for clinical trials with patients. 

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The current study of the IPF drug is double-blind and randomized. The trial is placebo-controlled and is being held in China for around 12 weeks. Insilico intends to expand the testing population to a total of 60 subjects. It plans to extend it to 40 sites in China and the U.S. In case the current second phase study proves to be successful, it will switch to another study with a greater cohort. The next step would then be to touch on phase three studies with hundreds of participants.

Zhavoronkov stated that the team expects to have the results from the ongoing Phase II trial in the upcoming year. He further stated that it is not easy to determine the exact timing for the upcoming phases, mainly because the disease is a rare one and patients must be fulfilling the specific criteria. The man then expressed that the team is optimistic that the drug will get ready for the market, and will also reach patients and benefit them, in the upcoming years.\

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