Quote:The first fully A.I.-generated drug enters clinical trials in human patients

Key Points

• Insilico Medicine, a Hong Kong-based biotech startup with more than $400 million in funding, created the drug as a treatment for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a chronic lung disease.
  
  
• "It is the first fully generative AI drug to reach human clinical trials, and specifically Phase II trials with patients," Alex Zhavoronkov, founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine, told CNBC.
  
  
• The discovery process for the new drug began in 2020.
  

Insilico Medicine, a Hong Kong-based biotech startup with more than $400 million in funding, created the drug, INS018_055, as a treatment for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a chronic disease that causes scarring in the lungs. The condition, which has increased in prevalence in recent decades, currently affects about 100,000 people in the U.S. and can lead to death within two to five years if untreated, according to the National Institutes of Health.

"It is the first fully generative AI drug to reach human clinical trials, and specifically Phase II trials with patients," Alex Zhavoronkov, founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine, told CNBC. "While there are other AI-designed drugs in trials, ours is the first drug with both a novel AI-discovered target and a novel AI-generated design." 

The discovery process for the new drug began in 2020, with hopes to create a "moonshot" medicine to overcome challenges with current treatments for the condition, which mostly focus on slowing progression and can cause uncomfortable side effects, Zhavoronkov said.

He added that Insilico has chosen to focus on IPF in part because of the condition's implications in aging, but the company has two other drugs partially generated by AI in the clinical stage. One is a Covid-19 drug in phase one clinical trials, and the other is a cancer drug, specifically a "USP1 inhibitor for the treatment of solid tumors," that recently received FDA approval to initiate clinical trials.

When this company was launched, we were focused on algorithms — developing the technology that could discover and design new molecules," Zhavoronkov said. "I never imagined in those early days that I would be taking my own AI drugs into clinical trials with patients. But we realized that in order to validate our AI platform, we needed to not only design a new drug for a new target, but bring it into clinical trials to prove that our technology worked." 

The IPF drug's current study is a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial taking place over 12 weeks in China, and Insilico has plans to expand the testing population to 60 subjects at 40 sites in the U.S. and China. If the current phase two study is successful, it will go on to another study with a larger cohort, and then potentially reach phase three studies with hundreds of participants.

"We expect to have results from the current Phase II trial next year," Zhavoronkov said, adding that it's difficult to predict exact timing for future phases, especially since the disease is relatively rare and patients must fulfill specific criteria. He added, "We are optimistic that this drug will be ready for market, and reach patients who may benefit from it, in the next few years." 

Quote:“And in May, we announced that our first AI-designed cancer drug received IND approval from the FDA to proceed to clinical trials – a new treatment for solid tumors that shows promise to benefit cancer patients who are resistant to other treatments. “

Zhavoronkov also added: “We have a number of cancer drugs designed by AI in our pipeline, and presented four of them at the American Association for Cancer Research annual meeting in Orlando, Florida held in April.”

About the role of the Abu Dhabi research lab in developing this test drug for IPF, Zhavoronkov, said: “Our AI and Quantum Computing R&D center in Abu Dhabi drives the technology advancements related to our generative AI platform, Pharma.AI, which combines generative chemistry and generative biology in order to produce new drugs like this IPF drug.”

“This platform was used in order to identify the novel target (known as “Target X”) which is implicated not only in IPF but other forms of fibrosis, and was also used to generate an entirely new molecule which has shown promise as a treatment for IPF and is now in Phase II trials with patients.
....
Zhavoronkov added: “We see great potential for continued use of the AlphaFold predicted protein database with our platform. We’ve also added chat functionality into our target discovery engine, called ChatPandaGPT, allowing users more seamless interaction with the knowledge graph that connects diseases and possible targets. And in another international collaboration, we also recently published a study combining quantum computing with generative chemistry to generate new molecules. It’s the first step in what we believe will be the future of drug discovery and was published in the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling.”

Insilico takes AI-discovered designer drug into trials to treat pulmonary fibrosis

Quote:Dating AI is "a meditation on how to prepare for the unknown," a thought experiment designed to stimulate new ideas about issues that are important now as well as in the future. Fictional descriptions of human-android romances are interspersed with commentary about the varying differences between people and AI (Artificial Intelligence), and methods for breaching the chasm between machine and human experience. Chapters tie speculation into contemporary life, drawing parallels between current human interactions with machines.

Section 1, "Are you ready to fall in love with a machine?" explains what you'll need to know to engage romantically with AI (including similarities and differences). Section 2, "You are ready, now what?" helps interested humans prepare to date AI. Section 3, "Establishing a relationship" covers the complicated mix of human and AI needs in a relationship, including power dynamics and acceptable behavior. Section 4, "Getting over a breakup (or merger)" explains some of the legal and economic fallout that could result from the demise of an human-AI breakup.

Dating AI is an entertaining, humorous (even slightly satirical) exploration: not only of a possible future, but also of our rapidly changing present relationships with other people and technology. Discerning readers will be compelled to utilize their imaginations, again and again, in an attempt to depict the Psychology of the Future, which looks to be significantly different from anything Freud might have considered.

To quote the visionary writer J.G. Ballard, "Sex times technology equals the future." Just as almost nobody predicted the Internet until it suddenly seemed to have ensnared all within its grasp, so the technology of AI may, sooner than we think, come to be as natural as breathing, and inevitably, perhaps deeply, ensconced in our unconscious -- to be revealed in our dream life as we fall asleep at night.

Dreams reveal truths far beyond what the rational mind might consider "tolerable." It is only at the borders of acceptability where our future freedoms reveal themselves, adumbrating and perhaps incubating a society of the future, where science and art seamlessly integrate themselves, and where poetry and technology are no longer alien domains but a vast cultural continuum where play and discovery create new language and, ahem, acceptable behaviors! We shall see...

Amazon books

(07-03-2023, 09:24 PM)dbcowboy Wrote: You want a zombie apocalypse?

Because this is how you get a zombie apocalypse.

(07-03-2023, 09:24 PM)dbcowboy Wrote: You want a zombie apocalypse?

Because this is how you get a zombie apocalypse.