The primary drug created only by artificial intelligence (AI) without human intervention enters clinical trials.

CNBC reported on the twenty ninth (local time) that Insilico Medicine, a biotechnology startup in Hong Kong, has developed a drug called ‘INSO18_055’ as a treatment for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a chronic disease, and can enter clinical trials this week.

Alex Zavoronkoff, CEO of Insilico Medicines, said the drug was “the primary fully AI-generated drug to achieve phase 2 trials in human patients.” “There are AI-designed drugs from other corporations in clinical trials, but our drug is the primary drug that AI has discovered a latest goal and designed,” he explained.

As well as, it said that it began developing latest drugs in 2020 to beat problems that existing therapies mainly deal with slowing the progression of the disease and cause uncomfortable side effects. IPF is a pulmonary disease with an increasing prevalence in recent times, affected by 100,000 people in the US alone and resulting in death inside 2 to five years if not treated.

“To this point, now we have focused on algorithms to develop technologies that may discover and design latest molecules,” said Zhavoronkov. realized,” he said.

He added that although IPF treatment was chosen to deal with the issue of aging, there are AI-created drugs which have entered clinical stages for other diseases as well. Corona treatment is in phase 1 clinical trial, and ‘USP1 inhibitor’ for the treatment of solid tumors has recently been approved for clinical trials by the US Food and Drug Administration, he said.

Insilico’s IPF treatment will probably be tested on 60 people within the US and China, and if the phase 2 study is successful, it’ll enter the phase 3 study involving tons of of participants. “We expect to see results from the phase 2 trial next yr,” Zavoronkov said, but said it was difficult to accurately predict future timelines since the disease is comparatively rare and patients being tested must meet certain criteria.

“But we’re able to bring this drug to the market,” he said. “I’m optimistic that it’ll profit patients in the approaching years.”

Reporter Jeong Byeong-il jbi@aitimes.com