On August 10, Insilicon, a clinical-stage drug development company driven by end-to-end artificial intelligence, announced today that it has received a D2 round of financing. This round of financing was led by Prosperity7 Ventures, a diversified venture capital fund under Saudi Aramco. After this round of financing, Insilicon has completed a total of USD 95 million in Series D financing, and the participating investors include many professional investors in the fields of biomedicine and life sciences around the world.
This financing introduced Prosperity7 as a new investor, and also participated in the existing investors of the D round of financing, including: a large diversified asset management company on the west coast of the United States, Boston Investment, Warburg Pincus, Bohai Huamei (Shanghai) Equity Fund, Qiming Venture Partners, Deerfield, Lanting Investments, BOLD Capital Partners and WS Investment Company. Insilicon founder and CEO Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov also personally participated in the investment.
Aysar Tayeb, Executive Managing Director of Prosperity7 Ventures, said: “The deepening application of artificial intelligence and machine learning in drug discovery has had a transformative impact on the pharmaceutical industry, and we are delighted to partner with Insilicon, a pioneer in this innovation. Prosperity7 Ventures will rely on Saudi Aramco’s global network and abundant resources to support Insilicon to accelerate its large-scale development and expand its global layout, thereby promoting the development of biotechnology and bringing positive impacts to human health.
The newly raised Series D financing will further support Insilicon to advance its internal self-developed pipeline, including leading projects currently undergoing Phase 1 clinical trials in New Zealand and China, as well as several pipelines in the IND-Enabling stage. The funds raised will also be used for Insilicon’s key strategic layout, including further development of its end-to-end artificial intelligence drug research and development platform Pharma.AI; to promote the construction of a fully automated intelligent robot drug research and development laboratory and a robotic biological data factory; And support the construction of Insilicon’s regional centers around the world. “
Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov, founder and CEO of Insilicon Intelligence: “As Saudi Aramco becomes the world’s most valuable company by market capitalization in 2022, we are deeply honored to receive Saudi Aramco’s venture capital arm, a venture capital fund focused on investing in ‘disruptive technologies’ The new funding round led by Prosperity7 Ventures. Previously, being in Saudi Arabia made me feel that the country is undergoing a huge leap in technology, and we look forward to being a part of it and using the latest advances in artificial intelligence to accelerate this vision.
Thanks to the unique dual CEO structure, Insilicon is simultaneously promoting the development of artificial intelligence technology and drug research and development capabilities. After the completion of the last round of financing, Dr. Feng Ren, Chief Scientific Officer of Insilicon Intelligence, was nominated as Co-CEO to further promote the construction of the drug R&D team. In addition, Dr. Feng Ren will guide the development of the growing clinical pipeline and play a leading role in promoting business expansion. During his tenure as Chief Scientific Officer, Insilicon has rapidly transformed its internal R&D pipeline into a portfolio of strong preclinical drug candidates that are highly innovative and novel for unmet clinical needs .
At present, 7 of Insilicon’s research projects have entered the IND-enabling stage, including a new 3CL protease inhibitor preclinical candidate for the treatment of COVID-19, and two drugs targeting MAT2A and USP1 respectively. “Synthetic lethal” antitumor therapy. In addition, Insilicon’s fastest-growing anti-fibrosis project in the pipeline has also successfully completed Phase 0 micro-dose group trials, and is currently conducting Phase 1 clinical trials in New Zealand and China. “
Dr. Feng Ren, Co-CEO and Chief Scientific Officer of Insilicon Intelligence, said: “Insilicon Intelligence is a company with equal emphasis on artificial intelligence and drug development, as can be seen from the company’s latest structure. We are approaching some exciting milestones. , including: expanding our business globally, developing an intelligent robotics laboratory, and making significant progress in our pipeline. This round of financing will help us further expand our capabilities, advance internal research projects, develop an AI technology platform, and partner with Saudi Arabia Regional partners form an alliance to build a new regional technology center.
Insilicon has established cooperative relationships with a number of large pharmaceutical companies. Since the launch of the artificial intelligence target discovery engine PandaOmics™ and the small molecule compound generation engine Chemistry42™ in 2020, 9 of the world’s top 20 pharmaceutical companies have authorized the introduction of Insilicon’s artificial intelligence drug research and development platform. In January and March 2022, Insilicon reached strategic cooperation with Fosun Pharma and EQRx respectively. It is worth mentioning that after reaching a strategic cooperation with Fosun Pharma, Insilico achieved its first major milestone in less than 40 days: the discovery of a preclinical drug candidate targeting QPCTL for innovative oncology immunity therapy. External cooperation is still an important part of Insilicon to demonstrate and prove the strategic value of its artificial intelligence drug research and development platform Pharma.AI. “
