By Gabriel Lago
03 Oct 2023, 01:49 AM EDT
A new drug against Covid-19 designed by Insilico Medicine with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) recently entered phase 1 of clinical trials.
Insilico Medicine is a biotechnology company based in New York City and Hong Kong and its website describes it as “artificial intelligence for every step of pharmaceutical research and development.”
It should be noted that the new drug against Covid is considered “a treatment rather than a vaccine.” If the AI-generated drug successfully passes clinical trials and is approved for the public, it would serve as an alternative antiviral drug for the disease to current drugs like Lagevrio and Paxlovid, reports Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, CEO and founder of Insilico. Medicine.
“Generative AI is transforming all areas of human development. “We are very pleased to announce that our second small therapeutic molecule, generated through generative AI, is now entering human clinical trials,” as mentioned by Zhavoronkov in a press release announcing the new drug obtained by Fox News.
According to the media, Insilico highlighted some of the negative aspects of other drugs against Covi-19, such as Paxlovid. The company claimed that Paxlovid had been linked to undesirable side effects, such as patients testing positive soon after recovering from the disease and testing negative.
Furthermore, Insilico stated that while Paxlovid is susceptible to drug-resistant strains of Covid-19, the AI-generated drug has demonstrated efficacy against variants that show resistance to Paxlovid. The company claimed that the ISM3312 drug “significantly reduced” the virus in lung tissue and at the same time reduced inflammation in the lung.
Zhavoronkov said that “the drug has been shown to be effective against all variants, as well as other types of coronaviruses that cause disease, including severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS),” according to FoxNews.
Furthermore, the company stated that if the new drug ISM3312 is approved, it would be easy to produce large quantities of the drug. “Our molecule requires only a two-step process using simple, commercially available starting materials.”
The drug ISM3312 is currently in phase 1 evaluation to determine both the safety and tolerability of the new drug in healthy volunteers.
Furthermore, the drug compound is also undergoing testing against the EG.5 Covid-19 variant. Results from ongoing clinical trials are expected to be published by the end of the year.
“Generative AI offers us a powerful tool to accelerate the drug discovery process and allows us to quickly identify new solutions that we hope can provide more potent defenses against mutant strains of Covid and prevent another pandemic,” Zhavoronkov added.
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