Insilico Medicine and Westlake Pharma announced a strategic partnership to jointly develop innovative small-molecule drugs for Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) today.

The cooperation will be based on the anti-COVID-19 drug R&D project by Westlake Pharma, which aims to develop broad-spectrum small molecule inhibitor drugs for key enzymes of coronavirus and has achieved positive results in the preliminary stage. According to the agreement, the two parties will combine the advantages of Insilico Medicine's AI-powered platforms for drug R&D, and further utilize interdisciplinary molecular design methods such as artificial intelligence, computer simulation and pharmacodynamic to design, synthesize and optimize novel selective small molecule inhibitors to accelerate the advancement of pre-clinical and clinical research on the anti-COVID-19 project.

The epidemic caused by the Novel Coronavirus is still ongoing, which has had a significant impact on human health and economic development and has brought severe challenges to global public health security. The close collaboration between Insilico Medicine and Westlake Pharma aims to strengthen multi-party communication and jointly achieve a scientific and technological breakthrough to bring efficient solutions to the R&D of innovative therapies for the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19), severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and other coronaviruses.

"AI technology can greatly shorten the duration for new drug R&D. Insilico Medicine has an efficient AI-powered platform for drug R&D, and Westlake Pharma is committed to focusing on major human diseases and developing First-in-Class drugs with independent intellectual property rights. We believe that the cooperation between us will be a strong combination of "AI + drug R&D", which will achieve the goal of "1 + 1 > 2", said Prof. Yu Hongtao, the founder of Westlake Pharma.

"Most of the original innovations in biomedicine came from scientific research institutions. Based on a Westlake University, jointly founded by Prof. Yu Hongtao (Dean of the School of Life Science, Westlake University), Prof. Hu Qi and Prof. Huang Jing, the Westlake Pharma is a biomedical enterprise focusing on original innovations. Insilico Medicine is honored to cooperate with Westlake Pharma. We would like to combine our unique AI platform with Westlake Pharma's characteristic technical methods in cell biology, structural biology and medicinal chemistry to jointly accelerate the development of innovative therapies, and provide solutions for unmet clinical needs, such as Novel coronavirus pneumonia", said Dr. Ren Feng, Chief Scientist Officer and Director of Drug R&D of Insilico Medicine.

About Insilico Medicine

Insilico Medicine, an end-to-end artificial intelligence-driven drug discovery company，developing artificial intelligence platforms that utilize deep generative models, reinforcement learning, transformer, and other modern machine learning techniques for novel target discovery and generation of novel molecular structures with desired properties. It is developing breakthrough solutions for the discovery and development of innovative drugs for cancer, fibrosis, infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, and aging-related diseases. Since 2014, Insilico Medicine established strategic collaborations with over 30 pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies and academic research groups in the United States, Europe, China, Japan and other countries and regions, and launched multiple internal R&D pipelines for novel, difficult and previously undruggable targets. It also established a collaboration with Syngenta to develop and apply AI to sustainable agriculture. Since its inception, the company raised over $300 million from the reputable financial, biotechnology, and information technology investors.

About Westlake Pharma

Relying on Westlake University, established in September 2020, and headquartered in Yunqi Town (Xihu District, Hangzhou, Zhejiang), the Westlake Pharma, Inc. (Hangzhou) is a talent-led, technology-driven, and innovative-model biomedical enterprise. The founding team was led by Prof. Yu Hongtao, a world-renowned cell biologist and the Dean of the School of Life Sciences of Westlake University, and Prof. Hu Qi and Prof. Huang Jing of the School of Life Sciences of West Lake University. Based on the in-depth understanding of life sciences, combined with the application of interdisciplinary technical methods such as cell biology, structural biology, medicinal chemistry, artificial intelligence, etc., Westlake Pharma exerts strong scientific and technological innovation capabilities, deepens research and development on selected product pipelines, and maintains a leading position in the sub-divisions. With strong support from international CRO/CDMO companies, DEL to PROTAC technology platforms as well as AI data platforms, the enterprise is committed to developing First-in-Class original new drugs with independent intellectual property rights for major human diseases.