How Insilico and Lilly Are Automating the Drug R&D Stack

The pharmaceutical industry is transitioning toward an automated, data-first R&D model by merging Gen AI with traditional drug development.

Insilico Medicine, a biotechnology company powered by Gen AI and automation, is working with pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly to accelerate the discovery and development of novel therapeutics across multiple therapeutic areas.

The enterprise architecture: Pharma.AI 

The companies will work together towards a software-defined pipeline. 

Pharma.AI is an end-to-end suite designed to automate the entire process of making a drug, from picking the right biological target to predicting if the drug will actually work in humans.  It aims to replace years of trial-and-error with high-speed AI simulations.

For example, the PandaOmics platform scans biological data to find the specific “broken” protein or gene (the target) that is causing a disease. 

Once the target is found, Insilico’s Chemistry42 “imagines” and designs new molecules from scratch that can attach to and fix that target. 

Meanwhile, the inClinco analyses data from previous clinical trials to predict the probability of a new drug succeeding in human testing, helping researchers avoid expensive failures. 

Scaling intelligence

The agreement is worth up to US$2.75bn and grants Lilly an exclusive worldwide license for the development, manufacturing and commercialisation of best-in-class, novel oral therapeutics in preclinical development.

For Insilico, this results in an US$115 million upfront payment, followed by development, regulatory and commercial milestones.

“From its inception, Insilico Medicine has been developing deep learning for end-to-end drug discovery,” says Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine. 

“By developing frontier AI technologies that scale from biomarkers to life models, world models of human and animal life, we can identify multi-purpose targets driving multiple diseases at the same time.

“Working with Lilly, we aim to deliver transformative therapies that treat diseases with high unmet need. 

“This collaboration is a testament to the power of AI in tackling the most complex challenges in human health.”

Strategic integration

Insilico and Lilly will collaborate on multiple research and development programmes focused on targets selected by Lilly, by combining Insilico’s Pharma.AI platforms with Lilly’s development capabilities and disease-area expertise.

Andrew Adams, Group Vice President of Molecule Discovery at Lilly, notes that “Insilico’s AI-enabled discovery capabilities represent a powerful compliment to Lilly’s deep expertise in clinical development across multiple therapeutic areas.” 

Through this unified tech stack, the partners “aim to deliver transformative therapies that treat diseases with high unmet need,” proving that the future of medicine is as much about code as it is about chemistry.

“This collaboration is a testament to the power of AI in tackling the most complex challenges in human health,” Andrew says.