Insilico Medicine, a clinical-stage biotechnology company pioneering generative AI for drug discovery and development, has announced the deployment of the first bipedal humanoid in its AI-powered fully-robotic drug discovery laboratory.
The humanoid, called “Supervisor” will be used for data acquisition and data generation for training of the embodied AI systems to learn the skills of human laboratory scientists. The work will be conducted by the Insilico Robotics team at Insilico Medicine. The humanoid will also immediately assist with lab tours, telepresence, tracking and lab supervision.
Humanoid systems
“Most of today’s laboratory equipment was designed to be operated by humans making it virtually-impossible to have human-free fully-autonomous robotics facilities. Even equipment designed for automation and operation using autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs) needs human intervention for reagent changes and maintenance. Humanoids will bridge this gap and enable fully-robotic facilities operated using agentic AI. We aim to develop very capable humanoid systems that we and our partners in pharma, carbon capture and in other sustainability research areas could deploy. These humanoids will work hand-in-hand with human scientists and are capable of performing mundane tasks like pipetting, working with reagents, and operating laboratory equipment,” said Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine.
Since the launch of the fully-robotic LifeStar1 laboratory in December 2022, Insilico Medicine has developed multiple automated workflows for target discovery, indication expansion and aging research. The LifeStar1 and DORA platforms are already performing fully-robotic agentic AI research in cancer and aging.
One of the recent studies, “AI-Driven Robotics Laboratory Identifies Pharmacological TNIK Inhibition as a Potent Senomorphic Agent” published in Aging and Disease, used a robotic workflow to demonstrate the anti-aging senomorphic properties of Insilico’s ISM001-055 investigational drug currently in clinical trials for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF). Insilico intends to add humanoid-in-the-loop in its fully-robotic workflows.
Generative AI
Insilico first described the concept of using generative AI for the design of novel molecules in a peer-reviewed journal in 2016, then continued to develop the commercially available Pharma.AI platform, which powered the wholly owned pipeline of 30 assets established since 2021, with 10 having received IND clearance, setting a benchmark for AI-driven drug discovery and development.
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In early 2024, Insilico published a Nature Biotechnology paper presenting the entire R&D journey from AI algorithms to Phase II clinical trials of ISM001-055, the company’s lead drug pipeline with AI-discovered target and AI-designed structure. Following that, Insilico has recently announced positive preliminary results from a Phase IIa trial (NCT05938920), where ISM001-055 showed favorable safety and tolerability across all dose levels, as well as dose-dependent response in forced vital capacity (FVC), after only 12 weeks of dosage.
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