Insilico medicine develops new drug technology

Nigeria’s artificial intelligence and longevity consultant at the Africa AI for Healthcare Initiative of Insilico Medicine, Iraneus Ogu, has said a new technology for drug discovery that dramatically accelerates the process from years to weeks has been developed.

Ogu disclosed this in Abuja Thursday while fielding questions from the media during an international conference on global health security.

He said AI technology called Generative Tensorial Reinforcement Learning (GENTRL) “can help Nigeria and other developing nations in Africa build their own globally significant pharmaceutical industries by leapfrogging years of pharmaceutical R&D, and can compensate for inadequate local talent”.

Ogu assured that with the technology, health professionals and scientists, especially those with pharmaceutical and biological science background, can now start their own drug discovery companies to help improve healthcare in the country since Insilico has made GENTRL’s source code available as open source.

He said the AI system designs the molecules and that the experiments can be performed by the CROs worldwide, adding that Insilico successfully tested the technology by creating a series of entirely new molecules capable of combating disorders like fibrosis, adding that the same technique could be applied to other diseases especially neglected tropical diseases.

The consultant further explained that normal drug discovery starts with the testing of thousands of small molecules to get to just a few lead-like ones that can pass clinical trials in human patients. Using this AI technique makes it possible to generate potential drug candidates within a very short period of time, and at much lower costs.

Quoting Insilico medicine Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Alex Zhavoronkov,  Ogu said, “With GENTRL’s successful experimentation and validation, Insilico has moved the use of AI for drug discovery from academic theory to reality, from what many thought was scientifically impossible to what is now possible.”

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