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NEW YORK and HONG KONG, June 22, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Insilico Medicine, a global leader in end-to-end artificial intelligence for target discovery, small molecule chemistry, and clinical development, announced that it has closed a $255 million Series C financing led by Warburg Pincus. The financing was also participated by current investors including Qiming Venture Partners, Pavilion Capital, Eight Roads Ventures, Lilly Asia Ventures, Sinovation Ventures, BOLD Capital Partners, Formic Ventures, Baidu Ventures, and new investors including CPE, OrbiMed, Mirae Asset Capital, B Capital Group, Deerfield Management, Maison Capital, Lake Bleu Capital, President International Development Corporation, Sequoia Capital China and Sage Partners.
As a pioneer and leader in the industry, Insilico Medicine has built a strong drug discovery and drug development team, a broad distributed discovery partner network, and initiated multiple internal therapeutic programs. The Company demonstrated the first case of AI identifying a novel target for a major pulmonary disease, generating novel molecules for that novel target, and completing the preclinical experiments required to nominate a preclinical candidate in under 18 months. Insilico Medicine also developed the AI-powered drug discovery platform consisting of PandaOmics™ AI-powered novel target discovery engine, Chemistry42™ deep generative reinforcement learning system allowing for de-novo design of novel molecules with the desired properties that do not exist in the known chemical space, and InClinico™, which predicts clinical trial outcomes.
Proceeds from the financing will be used to progress Insilico Medicine's current therapeutic programs into human clinical trials, initiate multiple new programs for novel and difficult targets, and further develop its AI and drug discovery capabilities.
Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine said, "The artificial intelligence technologies we invented are now demonstrating impressive results in both biology and chemistry delivering valuable and absolutely novel therapeutic assets with high probability of clinical success. We are pleased and proud to have gained the recognition and investment from some of the world's most reputable investors with strong expertise in the biopharmaceutical industry. With their support, we will continue to innovate and bring revolutionary solutions to the pharmaceutical industry."
Min Fang, Managing Director at Warburg Pincus, will join Insilico Medicine's Board of Directors.
Fred Hassan, former Chairman and CEO of Schering Plough Corporation, commented on behalf of Warburg Pincus, "Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning is a powerful tool to revolutionize the drug discovery process and bring life-changing therapies to patients faster than ever before. We are pleased to partner with Insilico, which has demonstrated strong value proof of its AI technologies both through partnerships with leading pharmaceutical and biotech companies and the development of exciting internal pipeline. Insilico fits strongly with our strategy of investing in the best-in-class innovators in the healthcare and we will continue to support the company's ambitious vision of transforming drug discovery through harnessing AI and Machine Learning."
Since the previous round of financing, Insilico Medicine is making its technologies available for licensing for the leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies looking to gain a head start in AI and accelerate their drug discovery programs. It has collaborated with first-in-class biopharmaceutical companies, including Pfizer, Astellas, Johnson & Johnson, Taisho, and many others, with multiple partners reaching major milestones. Insilico Medicine also exclusively partnered with the main innovative sustainable agriculture company, Syngenta, on the discovery of novel molecules for sustainable regenerative farming. Since the launch of Chemistry42 in September 2020, 7 out of the top 30 pharmaceutical companies deployed its software, including Merck KGaA and UCB. Insilico Medicine also built a drug discovery team and platform in China and started multiple therapeutic programs targeting novel, difficult, and previously undruggable targets.
About Insilico Medicine
Insilico Medicine develops artificial intelligence systems that utilize deep generative models, reinforcement learning (RL), transformers, and other modern machine learning techniques for the generation of new molecular structures with specific properties. Insilico Medicine also develops software for the generation of synthetic biological data, target identification, and the prediction of clinical trials outcomes. The company integrates two business models; providing AI-powered drug discovery services and software through its Pharma.AI platform (www.insilico.com/platform/) and developing its own pipeline of preclinical programs. It has demonstrated the ability to identify the novel target for a major disease, generate and validate novel molecules with the desired properties for that target and nominate a preclinical candidate in under 18 months. Since its inception in 2014, Insilico Medicine has raised over $310 million from expert pharmaceutical, and technology investors, and received multiple industry awards. Insilico Medicine has also published over 130 peer-reviewed papers and has applied for over 30 patents. For more information, please visit www.insilico.com.
About Warburg Pincus
Warburg Pincus LLC is a leading global private equity firm focused on growth investing. The firm has more than $60 billion in private equity assets under management. The firm's active portfolio of more than 200 companies is highly diversified by stage, sector, and geography. Warburg Pincus is an experienced partner to management teams seeking to build durable companies with sustainable value. Founded in 1966, Warburg Pincus has raised 19 private equity funds, which have invested more than $90 billion in over 930 companies in more than 40 countries.
Since entering China in 1994, Warburg Pincus has invested nearly $14 billion in nearly 140 companies in the region. Warburg Pincus is one of the most active investors in the China healthcare industry, having invested more than $1.85 billion in the sector. Select investment cases include Abbisko Therapeutics, Haihe Biopharma, Lepu Medical, Wuxi AppTec, China Biologics, Hygeia and Jinxin Fertility, etc. For more information please visit www.warburgpincus.com.
CONTACT: Polly Firs, polly.firs@insilicomedicine.com
