Beijing Tide Pharmaceutical and Insilico Medicine announce cancer drug discovery collaboration

Reviewed by Emily Henderson, B.Sc.Mar 16 2020

Beijing Tide Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. (Tide), a subsidiary of Sino Biopharmaceutical Limited, and Insilico Medicine, an artificial intelligence company developing end-to-end drug discovery pipelines, announced today that they are entering a collaboration, applying artificial intelligence (AI) technology to drug discovery, to jointly accelerate the process for multiple types of cancer treatment. This agreement includes an upfront payment, milestone payments, and royalties based on the sales of the products from the collaboration.

Tide is the second pharma company of Sino Biopharmaceutical Limited working with Insilico Medicine. We see a great potential of applying AI technology to drug discovery and healthcare sections, and we will invest more in AI applications."

Theresa Tse, Sino Biopharmaceutical Limited's Chairlady

Alex Zhavoronkov, CEO of Insilico Medicine, is likewise excited about the joint effort: "This collaboration was established for a single purpose: to support combined efforts to find a cure for and eliminate cancer. By using our resources and working with others dedicated to a common cause, there is a hope that together we can beat this disease."

Tide is a high-tech pharmaceutical enterprise in China with the capability of developing, manufacturing as well as marketing series of targeted drugs. Through years of experience, Tide has been identified as one of the innovation pilot enterprises, committed to innovation in science and technology. With the help of Insilico Medicine's AI platform, the new era of research and development of the Pharmaceutical industry has arrived. Tide Pharmaceutical and Insilico Medicine look forward to a long term and win-win partnership from the joint alliance of both companies.

Last September Insilico Medicine published a landmark paper in Nature Biotechnology demonstrating the application of its generative tensorial reinforcement learning systems to generate novel molecules for kinases in just 46 days including experimental validation which was widely covered by the press. The emerging AI technologies are expected to improve drug discovery process, and Tide commits to be a part of the AI revolution.