China's Insilico Medicine gets another $35m
Insilico Medicine, a China-based artificial intelligence-driven drug discovery company, has closed the second tranche of its Series D round on USD 35m, with Prosperity7 Ventures taking the lead.
The overall total now stands at USD 95m, following a first tranche of USD 60m in June featuring an unnamed US asset manager and BHR Partners, with re-ups from the likes of Warburg Pincus, B Capital Group, Qiming Venture Partners, Bold Capital Partners, and Pavilion Capital. Alex Zhavoronkov, Insilico's founder and CEO, also participated in the first tranche.
The proceeds will support the company's drug development pipeline and advance its Pharma.AI platform, which is intended to speed up drug discovery while reducing the overall cost. In addition, Insilico will expand its artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities beyond drug R&D into sustainable chemistry, green energy and agriculture.
“I am certain that the upcoming collaborations with Prosperity7 in the field of sustainable and environmentally-friendly chemistry and clean energy solutions will further expand our capabilities in our multi-purpose artificial intelligence,” said Zhavoronkov.
The company has also promoted its chief strategy officer, Feng Ren, to co-CEO to drive the drug R&D platform. Insilico said that, through this dual-CEO structure, it is AI and drug development capabilities could advance simultaneously.
Numerous start-ups have emerged at the nexus of drug development and AI, in some cases creating a clash of cultures between scientists and engineers.
Industry participants told AVCJ in a previous interview that having AI experts in leadership roles can lead to poor decision-making with regard to drug targets. They also suggested that a company's drug pipeline is intrinsically more valuable than a technology platform that provides development services to the pharma industry.
Insilico's lead program - and the first developed internally - is a treatment for fibrosis, which has completed in-human microdose studies and entered phase-one clinical trials in New Zealand and China. Seven internal candidates have progressed to the investigational new drug (IND) stage, including one treatment for COVID-19 and two for cancer.
The company was founded in the US in 2014 and relocated its headquarters to Hong Kong in 2019, citing the importance of the China market. It raised a USD 37m Series B led by Qiming in 2019 and a USD 255m Series C led by Warburg Pincus last year.
Insilico's technology is based on GAN, or a generative adversarial network. It comprises two neural networks: a generator and a discriminator. The former creates a fake signal to fool the latter, and the latter spots the difference between real and fake signals. It amounts to a highly effective authentication mechanism.
When combined with another AI technology – reinforcement learning, which uses a reward-based system to help machines find the best possible behaviour or path - GAN can imagine new molecules. Insilico's breakthrough came when the system took 46 days to generate molecules that could be used to disrupt the spread of certain cancers. This kind of process normally takes up to a year.
The goal is to build a fully automated, AI-driven robotic drug discovery laboratory, and a fully robotic biological data factory.
Insilico claims that nine of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies globally use its AI platform. Earlier this year, it signed a multi-asset partnership deal with Fosun Pharma and a drug discovery co-development deal with EQRx. Less than 40 days after launching the Fosun Pharma partnership, Insilico had nominated a preclinical candidate for cancer immunotherapy.
Prosperity7 Ventures, a USD 1bn venture capital fund established by Saudi Arabia state oil giant Saudi Aramco, has become an increasingly active investor in China.
The GP recently joined a USD 150m Series D for Jaka Robotics - its third deal in the robotics space in 10 months. Prosperity7 has also backed service robot manufacturer Keenon Robotics and healthcare and rehabilitation robot specialist Fourier.
More on Greater China
Latest News
Asian GPs slow implementation of ESG policies - survey
Asia-based private equity firms are assigning more dedicated resources to environment, social, and governance (ESG) programmes, but policy changes have slowed in the past 12 months, in part due to concerns raised internally and by LPs, according to a...
Singapore fintech start-up LXA gets $10m seed round
New Enterprise Associates (NEA) has led a USD 10m seed round for Singapore’s LXA, a financial technology start-up launched by a former Asia senior executive at The Blackstone Group.
India's InCred announces $60m round, claims unicorn status
Indian non-bank lender InCred Financial Services said it has received INR 5bn (USD 60m) at a valuation of at least USD 1bn from unnamed investors including “a global private equity fund.”
Insight leads $50m round for Australia's Roller
Insight Partners has led a USD 50m round for Australia’s Roller, a venue management software provider specializing in family fun parks.