Insilico Medicine President Alex Aliper, Ph.D

Alex Aliper, PhD, president of global clinical stage artificial intelligence (AI)-powered drug discovery company Insilico Medicine (“Insilico”) will present at the Systems Aging Gordon Research Conference, a leading international scientific conference focused on advancing the frontiers of science through the presentation of cutting-edge and unpublished research. On Wed., June 5, 10:40 am, Dr. Aliper will give a talk titled “Generative Artificial Intelligence and Next-Generation Robotics for Drug Discovery and Longevity Research.” 

The conference is being held June 2-7 at the Rey Don Jaime Grand Hotel in Barcelona and will focus on “Systems Modeling, Aging Biomarkers, and Longevity Interventions.” It brings together scientists from diverse fields to discuss the latest aging biomarkers and approaches to identify and validate longevity interventions – including the use of AI and machine learning. Other featured speakers include noted Harvard genetics professor and longevity expert David Sinclair, PhD and Morten Scheibye-Knudsen, PhD, associate professor at the University of Copenhagen who studies the consequences of DNA damage and interventions. Dr. Scheibye-Knudsen helps guide the Aging Research and Drug Discovery conference in Copenhagen in August, where Insilico Medicine plays a key role. 

Insilico’s AI algorithms have been trained on both aging and disease and its lead drug, INS018_055, is a potentially first-in-class AI-designed TNIK inhibitor being advanced as a treatment for the deadly lung disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) and is currently in Phase II trials with patients. The journey of that drug is detailed in a recent paper in Nature Biotechnology. The Company has used its commercially available Pharma.AI platform, which includes generative biology, chemistry, and medicine, to produce a pipeline of 31 therapeutic assets in multiple disease areas, many of them aging-related, including fibrosis, cancer, and immunology.

Insilico researchers first identified TNIK as a therapeutic target utilizing a combination of multiple computational target discovery approaches while studying aging and fibrosis. In 2022, the Company published the hallmarks of aging assessment of multiple therapeutic targets ranked by novelty, confidence and druggability, showing that TNIK is implicated in multiple biological processes associated with aging-related diseases. 

A recent research paper in Trends in Pharmacological Sciences from Dr. Aliper and other Insilico scientists along with ETH Zurich revealed that TNIK has broad therapeutic potential beyond fibrosis, including in cancer, obesity and Alzheimer’s. In 2023, the Company launched a 6th generation intelligent robotics lab in Suzhou BioBAY Industrial Park which combines its Pharma.AI platform with fully automated biological experiment functional modules – including automated experiments in high-throughput hit compound screening, hit-to-lead optimization, lead-to-preclinical candidate (PCC) confirmation, and translational research. 

Dr. Aliper currently oversees a team developing the software behind many of Insilico’s therapeutic programs at the Company’s Quantum Computing and AI R&D Center in Masdar City in Abu Dhabi. 

About Insilico Medicine
Insilico Medicine, a global clinical-stage biotechnology company powered by generative AI, connects biology, chemistry, and clinical trial analysis using next-generation AI systems. The company has developed AI platforms that utilize deep generative models, reinforcement learning, transformers, and other modern machine learning techniques for novel target discovery and generating novel molecular structures with desired properties. Insilico Medicine is developing breakthrough solutions to discover and develop innovative drugs for cancer, fibrosis, immunity, central nervous system diseases, infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, and aging-related diseases. www.insilico.com