News Release

Semi-automated contracting system to accelerate partnering in AI-powered drug discovery

Partnership model between artificial intelligence (AI) development companies and 'Big Pharma' provides legal template for accelerated drug discovery process worldwide

Business Announcement

InSilico Medicine

Insilico & Hill Dickinson

image: Establishing legal template for accelerated drug discovery process worldwide. view more 

Credit: Insilico Medicine

Tuesday, July 23 - One of the main impediments in partnerships between the AI companies and biotechnology companies is contracting. Legal contracts for target identification and small molecule generation can be incredibly complex, especially when the parties do not have experience in partnering on AI-powered projects. In 2018-2019 Insilico Medicine partnered with nearly a dozen biotechnology companies with varying needs and developed a portfolio of use cases. It often took longer to negotiate a contract than to perform the project and deliver the working molecules to the partner.

A project to develop a new and flexible partnering process for pharmaceutical companies and AI drug discovery platforms has the potential to dramatically speed up the time it currently takes for new drugs to reach the market and enable delivery of better medicines to patients.

Insilico Medicine, one of the leaders in AI-powered drug discovery retained Hill Dickinson in 2018 and 2019 to standardise documentation for the small and medium biotechnology companies as well as "Big pharma" and simplify the often-complex partnership process; and in doing so, help accelerate the drug discovery process.

The new standardised documentation will be integrated into the automated partnering system that is already in use by Insilico and will be refined and developed using machine learning.

Hill Dickinson commercial partner Michael Corcoran, who led on the project, said: "We were delighted to work with Insilico to develop a standardised partnership agreement of this type. Hill Dickinson's life science, health tech and commercial teams have a wealth of specialist expertise that combine to give us a deep understanding right across the market in which Insilico operates, specifically the bridge between established pharma companies and biotech and AI."

Alex Zhavoronkov, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine, said: "We believe our collaboration with Hill Dickinson is an industry first: the first time in AI for drug discovery that someone has developed a flexible partnering agreement that accurately reflects the multiple partnering options and provides the ability to structure the agreement in semi-automatic manner. We look forward to further collaboration on related projects."

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For further information please contact: Annette Parker, PR and Communications Manager, Hill Dickinson Email: annette.parker@hilldickinson.com Tel: +44 (0)151 600 8807

For further information please contact: Ola Popova, Press Officer, Insilico Medicine Email: ola@insilico.com

Notes to editors:

About Hill Dickinson

Hill Dickinson LLP is a leading and award-winning international commercial law firm with more than 840 people including 175 partners and legal directors, with offices in Liverpool, Manchester, London, Leeds, Piraeus, Singapore, Monaco and Hong Kong.

Hill Dickinson delivers advice and strategic guidance spanning the full legal spectrum. The firm acts as a trusted adviser to businesses, organisations and individuals across the globe and from a wide range of market sectors, advising on non-contentious advisory and transactional work through to all forms of commercial litigation and arbitration.

Hill Dickinson's network of international offices reflects the global nature of our work; the Monaco office focuses on the needs of our yacht and superyacht client base, and our offices in Piraeus, Singapore and Hong Kong specialise in the marine, trade and energy markets.

For further information about the firm, please visit hilldickinson.com

For the latest legal alerts and updates on the firm, follow Hill Dickinson on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/hilldickinson

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About Insilico Medicine

Insilico Medicine is an artificial intelligence company headquartered in Hong Kong, with R&D and management resources in Belgium, Russia, UK, Taiwan, and Korea sourced through hackathons and competitions. The company and its scientists are dedicated to extending human productive longevity and transforming every step of the drug discovery and drug development process through excellence in biomarker discovery, drug development, digital medicine, and aging research.

Insilico pioneered the applications of the generative adversarial networks (GANs) and reinforcement learning for generation of novel molecular structures for the diseases with a known target and with no known targets. In addition to working collaborations with the large pharmaceutical companies, the company is pursuing internal drug discovery programs in cancer, dermatological diseases, fibrosis, Parkinson's Disease, Alzheimer's Disease, ALS, diabetes, sarcopenia, and aging. Through a partnership with LifeExtension.com, the company launched a range of nutraceutical products compounded using the advanced bioinformatics techniques and deep learning approaches. It also provides a range of consumer-facing applications including Young.AI.

In 2017, NVIDIA selected Insilico Medicine as one of the Top 5 AI companies in its potential for social impact. In 2018, the company was named one of the global top 100 AI companies by CB Insights. In 2018 it received the Frost & Sullivan 2018 North American Artificial Intelligence for Aging Research and Drug Development Award accompanied with the industry brief. Brief company video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l62jlwgL3v8.

For further information please visit https://insilico.com/


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