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Credit: Biogerontology Research Foundation
Thursday, June 14, London, UK: Biogerontology Research Foundation CSO to collaborate with Insilico Medicine and WuXi AppTec on a research study in artificial intelligence for drug discovery. The collaboration will also cover the many novel biological targets implicated in aging and age-related diseases. The Biogerontology Research Foundation salutes its Chief Science Officer, Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov, on the announcement of a research collaboration.
"I have known and admired Alex for at least 15 years, during which he has pioneered several groundbreaking initiatives that contributed substantially to the anti-aging crusade. Insilico is his most important effort yet, and it is fantastic to see that others, including such major global players as WuXi, share my enthusiasm. Insilico's technological breakthroughs have resulted from having a terrific leader and a wonderful team, and I'm sure that their success will go from strength to strength" said Aubrey de Grey, Chief Science Officer of SENS Research Foundation and VP of New Technology Discovery at AgeX Therapeutics.
WuxiApptec offers its clients a diverse and integrated suite of services to assist its global customer base and partners to minimize drug discovery and development time while simultaneously lowering the overall cost of biopharmaceutical and medical device R&D via streamlined and cost-effective solutions. By combining WuxiTec's comprehensive platform and services with Insilico's hallmark expertise in AI for drug discovery and biomarker development, the partnership has the potential to help usher in dramatic paradigm shifts in the drug development process, by focusing on slashing inefficiencies in the preclinical drug design stage of drug development, cutting development time and cost, and accelerating the pace by which lifesaving drugs can be delivered from the lab and into the hands of patients and doctors.
"Insilico Medicine is on the forefront of Artificial Intelligence for aging and longevity research. Its potential to deliver more QALY to nations threatened by demographic aging, and the dire economic burden that it poses in the coming years if not dealt with in terms of shifting from treatment to prevention and from palliative geriatrics toward comprehensive human healthspan extension, cannot be understated. We are proud to salute our CSO on the ongoing progress that his company is forging towards making extended healthy longevity a reality" said Dmitry Kaminskiy, Managing Trustee of the Biogerontology Research Foundation.
Insilico Medicine work in AI for age-related drug discovery and biomarker development is routinely covered in papers in peer-reviewed journals and major industry conferences. Their work has most recently been covered by MIT Technology Review China, Nature Medicine, Nature Biotechnology, The Pharmaceutical Journal of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society and many others. The Biogerontology Research Foundation works closely with Insilico Medicine in order to synergistically advance the paradigm shift from treatment to prevention and from palliative care toward comprehensive healthspan extension.
"I am really pleased that Insilico Medicine has attracted this new investment from such high calibre and internationally recognised partners. As the Insilico board representative of Juvenescence Limited , I have been really impressed by the progress that Alex and his team have made in the past year or so. They have fully embraced the potential of AI in medicine, and especially in medicine used to improve human lifespans, and it is a real pleasure to be their colleague. I am looking forward to the next phase of growth, supported by Juvenescence, which is adding to its existing investment , as well as by our new investment partners." said Jim Mellon, Founder of Juvenescence Limited and a Trustee of the Biogerontology Research Foundation.
The announcement of this partnership follows just weeks after the announcement of a partnership between Insilico Medicine and Nebula Genomics (led by renowned geneticist George Church) to collaborate on the use of blockchain technologies to create a marketplace for genomic and clinical data, effectively putting the power over biological data back into patients' hands, and building an infrastructure whereby patients can on the one hand have control over whether their clinical data is used by third parties, and on the other hand be remunerated for the use of their data when they choose to let it be used. It is hoped that the collaboration will make progress towards not only empowering patients with control over their own data, but also incentivize patients to allow their data to be used for study, ultimately leading to more diverse and comprehensive life science databases than have previously been available to researchers.
"Insilico Medicine is on the forefront of applying advanced machine learning and deep learning techniques, including Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) in particular, to novel molecule generation and target identification for aging research and the extension of healthy longevity. More broadly, the newly announced partnership between Insilico Medicine and Wuxi AppTec (one of China's largest biopharmaceutical companies, which raised more than $900M in their recent IPO) highlights the increasing interest mounting around the topic of longevity from some of the largest biomedical and biopharmaceutical companies globally, pointing to the general health and longevity of the overall longevity industry itself." said Franco Cortese, Deputy Director of the Biogerontology Research Foundation.
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About the Biogerontology Research Foundation
The Biogerontology Research Foundation is a UK non-profit research foundation and public policy center seeking to fill a gap within the research community, whereby the current scientific understanding of the ageing process is not yet being sufficiently exploited to produce effective medical interventions. The BGRF funds and conducts research which, building on the body of knowledge about how ageing happens, aims to develop biotechnological interventions to remediate the molecular and cellular deficits which accumulate with age and which underlie the ill-health of old age. Addressing ageing damage at this most fundamental level will provide an important opportunity to produce the effective, lasting treatments for the diseases and disabilities of ageing, required to improve quality of life in the elderly. The BGRF seeks to use the entire scope of modern biotechnology to attack the changes that take place in the course of ageing, and to address not just the symptoms of age-related diseases but also the mechanisms of those diseases.