Huadong Medicine and Insilico Medicine enter co-development partnership to advance oncology drug discovery by hitting undruggable targets

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Sep 08, 2021, 06:43 ET

SHANGHAI, Sept. 8, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Huadong Medicine (SZ.000963) and Insilico Medicine ("Insilico"), an end-to-end artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company, announced today that the companies have entered into a co-development partnership to accelerate the discovery of breakthrough small-molecule therapeutics by leveraging an innovative approach to oncology.

Pursuant to the collaboration agreement, Insilico and Huadong Medicine will launch a new drug discovery project involving the research and development (R&D) teams of both parties. The collaboration will leverage Huadong Medicine's advanced innovative drug discovery and screening characterization platform, in combination with Insilico's end-to-end AI-driven drug discovery platform, particularly the small molecule generation platform Chemistry42, in order to design and screen out potential first-in-class ("FIC") drug molecules with superior activity that may increase the druggability of targets. The project team will interfere with protein-protein interactions to hit undruggable targets that regulate tumor growth.

Insilico's self-developed small molecule generation platform Chemistry42 combines AI technology with computational and medicinal chemistry methods to efficiently generate novel molecular structures with desired properties for specific targets. This platform helps to screen and obtain potential therapeutic molecules, which are verified in vitro and in vivo, and delivers rapid comprehensive solutions from hits to preclinical candidates ("PCC").

Huadong Medicine, a publicly-traded pharmaceutical company with fully integrated R&D, manufacturing, distribution, sales and marketing capabilities, has more than 10,000 employees and a sales force covering thousands of hospitals in China. In addition, Huadong Medicine's R&D organization currently has more than 1000 FTEs involved in drug discovery, preclinical research, clinical research, CMC, and RA. Huadong Medicine focuses on innovation and transformation strategies and is committed to concentrating its advantages and R&D resources to build prospective products R&D pipeline in the fields of oncology, endocrine/metabolic, and autoimmune disease with the help of advanced technology and methods from its partners.

"Complementary advantages and cooperative innovation have increasingly become the trends of novel drug discovery and development. Insilico is honored to form a partnership with Huadong Medicine. By leveraging the strength of Insilico's advanced small molecule generation platform Chemistry42 and Huadong Medicine's powerful target verification and screening platform, we will hit previously undruggable targets by inhibiting protein-protein interactions, in order to meet unmet medicinal needs efficiently," said Feng Ren, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer and Head of Drug R&D at Insilico.

"The combination of AI and novel drug R&D can greatly improve the efficiency of drug R&D, and has the potential to significantly shorten timelines and reduce the cost of drug design, discovery, pre-clinical R&D, and clinical development. We look forward to collaborating with the leading international AI company Insilico, by leveraging respective advantages of both companies, in advancing the development of potential FIC drug molecules to meet increasing clinical medical needs, in addition to providing patients with more, better and ground-breaking treatment options," said Dongzhou Liu, Ph.D., Chief Scientific Officer and President of Global Research and Development at Huadong Medicine.

About Insilico Medicine
Insilico Medicine, an end-to-end artificial intelligence-driven drug discovery company, is developing artificial intelligence platforms. These platforms use deep generative models, reinforcement learning, transformers, and other modern machine learning techniques for novel target discovery and the generation of novel molecular structures with desired properties. Insilico Medicine is developing breakthrough solutions to discover and develop innovative drugs for cancer, fibrosis, infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, and aging-related diseases. For more information, please visit www.insilico.com.

About Huadong Medicine
Huadong Medicine Co., Ltd. (SZ.000963) is a leading Chinese pharmaceutical company based in Hangzhou, China. Founded in 1993, Huadong Medicine has fully integrated R&D, manufacturing, distribution, sales and marketing capabilities. Huadong Medicine's product portfolio and pipeline are specialized in oncology, immunology, nephrology, and diabetes. The Company's annual revenue in 2020 exceeded 5 billion USD. Huadong Medicine has more than 10,000 employees, and one of the most extensive commercial coverage and marketing capabilities in China. 'Patient Centered, Science Driven' is Huadong's value. For more information, please visit www.eastchinapharm.com/en.

SOURCE Insilico Medicine