One year ago, clinical stage artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company Insilico Medicine (“Insilico”) opened the largest AI research and development center in the Middle East in the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) headquarters in Masdar City in the UAE. Now, Insilcio is sharing its “Generative AI for Sustainability” vision – a commitment to developing the MENA region’s first AI-designed drug and new carbon-capturing materials and sustainable chemicals using the same generative chemistry platform.
Credit: Insilico Medicine
- One year ago, Insilico Medicine opened the largest AI research and development center in the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) headquarters in Masdar City – the Insilico Medicine Generative AI & Quantum Computing R&D Center.
- The site features a team of around 70 biotechnology experts from around the world.
- The UAE team is accelerating Insilico’s Pharma.AI platform – including the integration of LLMs and quantum computing – and has contributed to major AI drug breakthroughs – including the first fully generative AI drug in Phase II trials.
- Now, as part of a new “Generative AI for Sustainability” vision, Insilico’s platform is also being used to develop more sustainable chemicals, fuels, and materials in partnership with Syngenta, Luberef and others.
One year ago, clinical stage artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company Insilico Medicine (“Insilico”) opened the largest AI research and development center in the Middle East in the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) headquarters in Masdar City in the UAE. Now, Insilcio is sharing its “Generative AI for Sustainability” vision – a commitment to developing the MENA region’s first AI-designed drug and new carbon-capturing materials and sustainable chemicals using the same generative chemistry platform.
Insilico founder and CEO Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, will present at top conferences in the region to support the new vision, beginning with the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi April 16-18 – a global thinktank for addressing a sustainable future. On April 17, 11:30am, he’ll speak at the Masdar City Stand (Hall 5) on the topic “How AI and biotech are contributing to the sustainability of the human race,” emphasizing a paradigm shift to prevention. On April 17, at 3:30pm, he’ll speak as part of a panel discussion in the Innovation Zone (Hall 2) on “Bio-inspired solutions for climate resilience.” The panel will highlight success stories from biotech startups in the MENA region, including how life sciences can provide innovative solutions for climate challenges and the latest innovations in biomimicry, bioengineering, and nature-based approaches.
“Biotechnology is driving solutions to climate change,” says Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine. “And the MENA region is ideal for advancing these new solutions using the latest technological tools – with eager partners, government support, and an openness to new ideas and new technologies.”
Insilico first began validating the use of its Pharma.AI platform to produce sustainable chemicals for agricultural use in a multi-year collaboration with Syngenta in 2021. In 2022, the Company announced a Series D2 investment led by Prosperity7, the diversified growth fund of Aramco Ventures, allowing Insilico to further expand its AI capabilities from drug R&D to sustainable chemistry, green energy, and agriculture to actively support sustainable development. In 2023 at the LEAP conference in Riyadh, Insilico signed an agreement with Luberef – a Saudi Aramco base oil company – to collaborate on the sustainability and longevity of base oils using Insilico’s generative AI platform.
Zhavoronkov says the Company’s latest focus is on creating new carbon-capturing materials that can absorb CO2 and be reimagined as a sustainable food source for livestock.
“Just as we can use our generative AI to design molecules that can be developed as new treatments for diseases, we can use it to address climate change,” says Zhavoronkov, “and just as in drug discovery, we can find solutions much more rapidly and efficiently – and we need to move quickly as these issues are so urgent.”
Following the World Future Energy Summit, Dr. Zhavoronkov will attend:
- The World Economic Forum (WEF) Special Meeting focused on global cooperation, growth and energy, April 28-29, in Riyadh.
- The Annual Investment Meeting Congress May 7-9 in Abu Dhabi which seeks to accelerate opportunities for economic productivity and expansion.
- The Abu Dhabi Global Healthcare Week May 13-15 where he will moderate a panel on: “Accelerating Scientific Breakthroughs: AI’s Potential in R&D,” on May 14, 3:35-4:15pm.
- The BIO International Convention June 3-6 in San Diego, the largest gathering of biotechnology leaders, bringing together 20,000 industry experts from across the globe, where Insilico will have a booth and be represented at the Abu Dhabi pavilion.
Insilico Medicine is a pioneer in using generative AI for drug discovery and development. The Company first described the concept of using generative AI for the design of novel molecules in a peer-reviewed journal in 2016. Then, Insilico developed and validated multiple approaches and features for its generative adversarial network (GAN)-based AI platform and integrated those algorithms into the commercially available Pharma.AI platform, which includes generative biology, chemistry, and medicine and has been used to produce a robust pipeline of promising therapeutic assets in multiple disease areas, including fibrosis, cancer, immunology and aging-related disease, a number of which have been licensed. Since 2021, Insilico has nominated 18 preclinical candidates in its comprehensive portfolio of over 30 assets and has advanced six pipelines to the clinical stage. In March 2024, the Company published a paper in Nature Biotechnology that discloses the raw experimental data and the preclinical and clinical evaluation of its lead drug – a potentially first-in-class TNIK inhibitor for the treatment of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis discovered and designed using generative AI currently in Phase II trials with patients.
About Insilico Medicine
Insilico Medicine, a global clinical-stage biotechnology company powered by generative AI, connects biology, chemistry, and clinical trial analysis using next-generation AI systems. The company has developed AI platforms that utilize deep generative models, reinforcement learning, transformers, and other modern machine learning techniques for novel target discovery and generating novel molecular structures with desired properties. Insilico Medicine is developing breakthrough solutions to discover and develop innovative drugs for cancer, fibrosis, immunity, central nervous system diseases, infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, and aging-related diseases. www.insilico.com
