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Biotech firm Insilico Medicine relied on researchers in Abu Dhabi — and the emirate’s relatively cheap access to AI computing power — to find a potential breakthrough painkiller that could work without the addiction risk of opioids.
The candidate is the company’s 31st preclinical drug in six years, and the second to come out of its Abu Dhabi research facility. The discovery, which is moving toward human trials by next year, could be revolutionary, at least according to Insilico CEO Alex Zhavoronkov. The drug could be as transformative for pain treatment as GLP-1 drugs have been for obesity, meeting the massive demand for non-addictive pain treatment, Zhavoronkov told Semafor in an interview.
Insilico is among a growing group of pharmaceutical companies looking to use AI to cut the time it takes to get drugs to market, compressing development from nearly a decade to just a few years. Insilico said its new pain candidate was discovered and validated in about a year.
Abu Dhabi wants to be part of this lucrative innovation wave, and is spending billions of dollars to attract biotechnology firms that will do cutting-edge research and manufacturing from the UAE capital. One of the most ambitious plays is M42, the Mubadala and G42-backed healthcare company, which has gathered and sequenced nearly 1 million genetic samples — including from some 100,000 non-Emiratis — as part of a population-level effort led by the government to advance personalized medicine.
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Prior to Insilico, Abu Dhabi had no drug discoveries to its name, despite an ambition to become a cutting-edge research destination. It was not an obvious choice for the firm, which already had offices in hubs like Boston, Hong Kong, Montreal, and Shanghai before opening in the UAE in 2023.
Zhavoronkov said the emirate has proved effective at attracting technical talent. During the Russia-Ukraine war, the company relocated “top talent” from both countries — as well as Italy, the UK, and Poland — in “record time,” helped by the Abu Dhabi Investment Office and the UAE’s minister of AI.
By contrast, he described Hong Kong’s equivalent business development agency as “super bureaucratic”, and said hiring in Montreal would take six months.
Even after the Iran war, Zhavoronkov said he still feels safer in Abu Dhabi than in Boston or New York. Work in the UAE and plans for the business in the country haven’t been adjusted due to the war, he said.
Cheap energy has translated into lower computing costs, according to Zhavoronkov. “Even using Microsoft and AWS, if you are doing it in Abu Dhabi, they actually give you a really good discount,” he said.
Still, Abu Dhabi is a small slice of the process: Research work was shared with Hong Kong in this effort, and Insilico may do clinical trials in Australia. If a drug makes it to market — a big ‘if’ since the majority of drug candidates fail in trials — it is likely to be manufactured in China or India, with Insilico licensing commercial rights to a larger drugmaker, according to Zhavoronkov.
Step Back
Hong Kong-listed Insilico expects to post its first profit this year after signing research and licensing deals, including one with Eli Lilly in March that could be valued at $2.75 billion. But Zhavoronkov said profitability isn’t a virtue in an era of gluttonous AI spending.
“If you are talking to technology investors, they’re like, ‘Are you crazy? If you are not burning a lot of cash right now, it means that you are not investing enough in AI’,” he said. “I’m saying, ‘guys, open your eyes. You don’t need much compute’.” A typical drug program uses “less than three weeks” of computing power, and sometimes only a few days.
Notable
- Insilico plans to expand its Shanghai research lab as China competes with the West on cost and speed to bring drugs to market, Reuters reported.