Insilico Medicine and Usynova Announce Strategic Partnership on Accelerating R&D of Small Molecule Innovative Drugs with AI

SHANGHAI, Aug. 5, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Insilico Medicine, an industry leader in end-to-end artificial intelligence for target discovery, small molecule chemistry, and clinical development, and Usynova announced to reach strategic cooperation in advancing the development of novel therapies.

The agreement outlines a constructive framework where the two parties will combine the advantages of Insilico Medicine's AI-powered drug discovery platform with Usynova's experience in the small molecule innovative drug development to accelerate the development of small molecule innovative drugs, with a view to jointly addressing significant unmet medical needs and tackling novel and challenging targets in cancer and autoimmune diseases.

Insilico Medicine is a global leader in AI-powered drug discovery companies. Since 2014, Insilico Medicine developed the AI-powered drug discovery platform consisting of PandaOmics™ AI-powered novel target discovery engine, Chemistry42™ deep generative reinforcement learning system allowing for the de-novo design of novel molecules with the desired properties that do not exist in the known chemical space, and InClinico™, which predicts clinical trial outcome.

Usynova is an innovative enterprise on drug R&D, the founding team members of which come from multinational pharmaceutical enterprises and domestic CRO leading companies and possess rich experience in drug R&D. Focusing on the two major areas of autoimmune diseases and cancer, the enterprise has built platforms for small molecule chemical drugs and biomacromolecule drugs, developed several pipeline products at different R&D stages, and carried out two clinical trials. The cooperation between the two parties will accelerate the introduction of first-in-class and best-in-class small molecule innovative drugs to patients worldwide.

"China is on the path to becoming the source of truly innovative medicines for the world. We are very pleased to contribute to this important trend by partnering with the innovative biotechnology company, Usynova, to discover novel biomedicines utilizing the latest advances in next-generation artificial intelligence", said Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov, CEO of Insilico Medicine.

"We are honored to be a partner with Usynova, who takes the commitment to develop First-in-Class and Best-in-Class drugs. Insilico Medicine will make full use of the advantages of the AI-powered drug discovery platform, accelerate the R&D of small molecule innovative drugs of Usynova from the aspects of target screening, molecular design, compound synthesis, and work together with Usynova to provide subversive and efficient solutions for unmet clinical needs", said Dr. Ren Feng, the Chief Scientist of Insilico Medicine.

"Insilico Medicine has unique technical capabilities in target discovery and generative chemistry. We hope that the cooperation between the two parties can effectively improve the efficiency and accuracy of small molecule drug R&D. The combination of innovative drug companies and artificial intelligence (AI) technology platforms will definitely change the traditional model of innovative drug R&D in the future. Especially the fact that AI technology provides a new solution for discovering preclinical candidates compounds for novel and difficult targets. We are committed to explore an efficient drug R&D path jointly", said Dr. Hu Tao, the Chief Executive Officer of Usynova.

"Usynova's innovation focuses on the R&D in the fields of cancer and autoimmune diseases and aiming at meeting unmet medical needs. We are pleased to apply Insilico Medicine's cutting-edge AI technology platform to conduct in-depth explorations on novel target identification and drug development for novel and difficult targets. We are aiming to develop first-in-class drugs for the benefit of the cancer and autoimmune patients worldwide", said Dr. Peng Shengbin, the Chief Scientist of Usynova.

About Insilico Medicine

Insilico Medicine, an end-to-end artificial intelligence driven drug discovery company，develops artificial intelligence systems Pharma.AI（www.insilico.com/platform/）that utilize deep generative models, reinforcement learning, transformers, and other modern machine learning techniques for identify the novel target and generate new molecular structures with specific properties, and provides breakthrough solution for the discovery and development of innovative drugs for cancer, fibrosis, infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, and aging-related diseases. Since its inception in 2014, Insilico Medicine has reached strategic collaboration with more than 30 drug development companies in the United States, Europe, China, Japan and other countries and regions, and launched new multiple internal R&D pipelines for novel, difficult and previously undruggable targets.

About Usynova

Usynova Pharmaceuticals Ltd. (Shanghai) is an innovative drug R&D enterprise established in January 2020. The enterprise focuses on the treatment of autoimmune diseases and cancer. With the establishment of small molecule drug platforms and biomacromolecule drug platforms, it currently has nearly 10 pipeline products at different R&D stages. Among these product, the indications of UA007 are chemotherapy-induced diarrhea (CID) and chemotherapy-induced neutropenia (CIN). the Phase IIa clinical trial of such product have been completed with excellent POC results, and multiple phase IIb clinical trials are ongoing currently. The product has a number of global patents, and has been funded by the special national project on major new drug R&D. CID is one of the main side effects of cancer chemotherapy, and it is also an important reason for patients to withdraw from chemotherapy. However, there are no effective therapeutic drugs for CID currently. Small molecule pipeline products for targets with poor druggability will also be advanced to the clinical stage in the next few years. The enterprise has established a complete team covering early drug discovery, protein drug production, antibody preparation, pre-clinical and clinical studies, and drug registration application.

Contact: pr@insilico.com

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