Insilico Medicine Raises $60 Million, Will Launch AI Powered Robotics Lab

“We raised this Series D round from several of the most reputable US-based and global investors. It is a testament to the strength of our end-to-end AI platform, which has been validated by many partners. We currently have one drug candidate in Phase I clinical trials and we have nominated 7 preclinical candidates across a number of other disease indications since 2021. I am very excited about this progress and have decided to personally invest in this round.”

Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, Founder and CEO, Insilico Medicine

Insilico Medicine announced today that it has completed a $60 million Series D financing. Investors in this round include a large asset management firm on the US West Coast and BHR Partners, along with current investors, including Warburg Pincus, B Capital Group, Qiming Venture Partners, BOLD Capital Partners and Pavilion Capital. Insilico’s founder and CEO, Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, personally invested in this round. Since its inception in 2014 the company has raised over?$370 million and received multiple industry awards. Insilico Medicine has also published over 130 peer-reviewed papers and has applied for over 30 patents. The company has nine sites including offices in Asia, the US, Canada, and the Middle East.

Insilico will use capital raised in this round to advance their pipeline including its lead program, which is currently in Phase I, and continued development of its Pharma.AI platform. The proceeds will also fund ongoing global expansion and planned strategic initiatives, including a fully automated, AI-driven robotic drug discovery laboratory, and fully robotic biological data factory to complement Insilico’s vast curated data assets.

Last year, Insilico closed a?$255 million?oversubscribed Series C round led by Warburg Pincus. Other investors who participated in the Series C round included Qiming Venture Partners, Pavilion Capital, Eight Roads Ventures, Lilly Asia Ventures, Sinovation Ventures, BOLD Capital Partners, Formic Ventures, Baidu Ventures, CPE, OrbiMed, Mirae Asset Capital, B Capital Group, Deerfield Management, Maison Capital, Lake Bleu Capital, President International Development Corporation, Sequoia Capital China and Sage Partners.

Insilico Medicine's pipeline. Source Insilico Medicine

"For Insilico, 2022 was a year of incredible growth and progress. They have demonstrated the value of combining deep scientific expertise with cutting-edge technology capabilities to significantly accelerate drug discovery. We’re delighted to continue to partner with the Insilico team and support a company that is at the forefront of this innovation.”

Min Fang, Managing Director, Head of China Healthcare, Warburg Pincus

Since the previous round of financing, Insilico has developed a growing portfolio in frontier areas empowered by its proprietary AI platform and has expanded its collaborations with the pharmaceutical industry through co-development and software licensing deals with a number of major pharmaceutical companies.

Company Highlights in 2022

• 9 out of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies have licensed Insilico’s AI platforms.
• 7 programs in its internal pipeline have progressed to the IND-enabling stage, including a novel 3CL protease inhibitor for COVID-19 treatment, and 2 synthetic lethality programs targeting MAT2A and USP1 for oncology.
• In February, Insilico achieved a major milestone in the history of AI for Drug Discovery. The company started their Phase 1 human clinical trial with their first-in-class anti-fibrotic drug candidate. This is significant because this is the world’s first Phase 1 clinical trial of a drug developed from scratch using AI. This is the first time in history that a large group of humans (80 people) were dosed daily with a drug that was completely designed by AI.
• Insilico signed multi-asset partnerships with Fosun Pharma and EQRX in January and March, respectively. In January, Insilico Medicine and Fosun Pharma announced an important collaboration agreement that combines Insilico's end-to-end AI-driven drug discovery platforms and Fosun Pharma's clinical development and commercial expertise to discover and develop a portfolio of novel therapeutics.?
• Insilico achieved its first major milestone and nominated a preclinical candidate for the QPCTL program for cancer immunotherapy in less than 40 days into the strategic collaboration with Fosun Pharma.

Preview of Insilico Medicine's AI Driven Robotics Lab

Insilico Medicine is building a fully automated, AI-driven robotic drug discovery laboratory, and fully robotic biological data factory to complement Insilico’s vast curated data assets. A prototype of the robotics lab will be located in Suzhou, China. The lab will be equipped with several types of autonomous guided vehicles and advanced imaging devices. These are the first images of Insilico's AI- Driven Robotics Lab that Alex Zhavoronkov, founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine graciously shared with me.

Insilico Medicine's Source Insilico Medicine

“I have 15 years of experience working in large pharmaceutical companies and CROs and I am impressed by the speed and quality of our discovery programs. We plan to continue expanding the breadth of the pipeline and enhance our AI and robotics capabilities globally."

Feng Ren, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer and Head of Global Research and Development, Insilico Medicine

Insilico Medicine is a clinical stage end-to-end AI driven drug discovery company that connects biology, chemistry, and clinical trials 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 to discover novel targets and to design novel molecular structures with desired properties. Insilico Medicine is delivering breakthrough solutions to discover and develop innovative drugs for cancer, fibrosis, immunity, central nervous system diseases and aging-related diseases.

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Copyright ? 2022 Margaretta Colangelo. All Rights Reserved.

This article was written by?Margaretta Colangelo.?Margaretta is Co-founder of Jthereum. She serves on the advisory board of the AI Precision Health Institute at the University of Hawai?i?Cancer Center. She's based in San Francisco?

Twitter?@realmargaretta