Pharmaceutical Business review

Insilico and CMS launch drug discovery collaborations for CNS diseases

The collaboration will combine Insilico Medicine’s technologies for small-molecule design, candidate molecules screening, and target identification. Credit: tilialucida / Shutterstock.com.

The companies plan to jointly develop at least two research and development (R&D) programmes using Insilico Medicine’s AI platform alongside CMS’ expertise in clinical development.

Under the agreement, Insilico Medicine will receive R&D funding for each programme.

The collaboration will combine Insilico Medicine’s Pharma.AI platform and technologies for small-molecule design, candidate molecules screening, and target identification with CMS’s experience in regulatory planning, clinical trials, and commercialisation.

Both entities aim to cover the entire value chain from early discovery to bringing new therapies to market.

Project teams will jointly optimise decision-making, aiming to shorten development timelines and improve clinical success rates.

CMS chairman, CEO, president and executive director LAM Kong said: “We continue to enrich our pipeline with global first-in-class (FIC) and best-in-class (BIC) innovative assets, efficiently advancing their clinical research, development, and commercialisation to empower the continuous translation of scientific achievements into clinical practice.”

Insilico Medicine and CMS intend to integrate their resources and expertise to accelerate laboratory discoveries into clinical development, ultimately providing more treatments for patients.

Insilico Medicine co-CEO and chief scientific officer Feng Ren said: “Under this collaboration framework, we look forward to leveraging resource sharing and joint decision making to significantly shorten the development cycle of high-potential innovative drugs, enhance translational efficiency and clinical success rates, and accelerate the journey of more innovative molecules from ‘proof of concept’ to truly ‘benefiting patients’.

“Going forward, the two parties will continue to deepen multi-dimensional collaboration in pipeline layout, clinical strategy, and global partnerships, further improving the accessibility of innovative medicines, providing patients with more differentiated treatment options.”

Last month, Insilico entered a multi-year R&D collaboration with Servier, worth up to $888m, to develop and discover new oncology therapies.