Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD

AI-Designed PRMT5 Inhibitor Nominated in UAE

Today marks a historic moment for Insilico and another world's first in AI-powered drug discovery. We nominated the first preclinical/developmental candidate in the UAE. It is also our 30th PCC/DC nominated in the past 5 years. 12 molecules reached clinical stage, 3 Phase 2, 1 Phase 2a complete. But this PCC is very special and demonstrates the true power of AI that leaves no doubt in terms of its impact on drug discovery. We set up a site in the UAE just over 3 years ago and thanks to Abu Dhabi Investment Office مكتب أبوظبي للاستثمار we managed to bring together some of the top AI scientists, computational and medicinal chemists to scale our foundation models and to run drug discovery programs. Today, together with the @EDE_UAE Emirates Drug Establishment مؤسسة الإمارات للدواء we announced the discovery of the first home grown novel highly-CNS penetrant potent PRMT5 inhibitor with excellent preclinical safety profile and combination potential with our CNS-penetrant MAT2A inhibitor. We demonstrated that in the very large region that never discovered a novel drug before, AI enabled the discovery of a drug with a high level of novelty and commercial tractability. It marks a very important milestone in our company history as we can now empower entire nations to get a seat at the high-stakes molecular roulette table where winning means saving millions of lives around the world. It is also a massive milestone in my life as I firmly believe that establishing the vibrant biomedical industry would contribute to the cultural renaissance and achieving peace and prosperity in the Middle East. It is also the region where the leadership may with time allow for faster and more sophisticated human clinical trials which is the biggest bottleneck in AI-powered drug discovery. We urgently need the ability to have human-in-the-loop to provide frontier AI with rapid feedback and allow for scale up and recursive self improvement. This PCC/DC nomination also comes at a time when the UAE demonstrated unprecedented national resilience providing high level of safety to the residents despite unprecedented adversity. Our team at the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) continued working without interruption and delivered this PCC in record time and on budget. Congratulations to the team, to ADIO, to EDE, and DoH and everyone involved. Also, thanks to all my LinkedIn friends for your support and encouragement over the years. Link to the article in the comments