Artificial Intelligence Company to Develop Treatments for Duchenne and Other Rare Diseases

Insilico Medicine, an artificial intelligence (AI) for drug discovery company, and A2A Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a biotechnology company focused on novel drug development for oncology, have recently announced their research collaboration to form a new company, Consortium.AI, which will apply advances in AI to discovery of novel small molecules for the treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) and other rare diseases.

"We are pleased to partner with Insilico Medicine, combining our strengths and complementary technologies to accelerate advancement of better therapeutics into the clinic for the patients that need them," Elena Diez Cecilia, PhD, head of business development at A2A Pharmaceuticals, said in a statement. "Muscular dystrophy is a debilitating and terminal degenerative condition that causes muscle inflammation and wasting, and there is a huge need for more effective therapies."

Click to read more about DMD.

A2A Pharmaceuticals will manage the new company, provide their development expertise for newly discovered compounds, and will be involved with the licensing of the compounds. Incilico Medicine’s artificial intelligence system will be used to validate computationally pre-optimized new drug candidates that are designed for specific targets.

Insilico Medicine’s technology can apply advances in deep neural networks to identifying critical disease targets and novel chemistry by using next-generation AI. This will work in combination with A2A’s proprietary computational tools to design selective therapeutics for difficult to drug targets, including protein—protein interactions.

"A2A Pharmaceuticals has a team of highly talented drug hunters with a proven track record in discovery, development and licensing of the drug candidates. We are very happy to partner with their team to address the unmet medical needs of patients who are desperately waiting for solutions. This is fantastic application for AI,” said Alex Zhavoronkov, founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine.

The research collaboration with Insilico AI’s biology and target discovery engine, and A2A Pharmaceutical’s chemical design expertise in drug development, is expected to help produce more effective therapeutics that can be developed more quickly and at a lower cost.