00:00Yes, China's first domestically developed drug created with the help of AI is now on sale
00:04and Proceivir is intended for adult patients with mild and moderate COVID symptoms.
00:10What's novel is this drug is that artificial intelligence helped shorten the development process
00:15which can usually take around 10 years to just three and a half.
00:19Now, one of the key steps was to identify promising drug molecules from billions of potential candidates.
00:25AI helped researchers at Hangzhou-based Westlake Pharma screen 49 billion molecules
00:31and narrowed them down to just nine in a matter of days.
00:35Well, globally, AI drug discovery has grown into a $2.6 billion industry
00:41and more than 170 AI-developed drug candidates have entered clinical development.
00:46China's fast-growing market is also attracting global pharmaceutical giants.
00:51AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson and Novartis have all partnered with Chinese companies
00:57on AI-assisted drug development.
00:59The boom comes as Beijing encourages greater integration of artificial intelligence
01:04into the development of drugs, but scientists warn the technology can be a double-edged sword.
01:10Concerns include so-called AI hallucinations, when systems generate false or misleading information,
01:15and a widening gap between the speed of AI-driven discoveries
01:19and the much slower process of laboratory testing and clinical validation.
01:24Well, let's get more with Dr. Alex Gerard-Ronkov, CEO of InSilico Medicine,
01:29widely recognized as being the first company to advance an AI-designed drug to human clinical trials.
01:36Thank you so much for being with us.
01:37Now, obviously, we've got this big news out of China today.
01:40How significant a development is this?
01:44I think it is a very important development.
01:48China has become a massive hub for biopharmaceutical innovation on a global scale,
01:54and it's not only catching up, it's now leading.
01:58Here, Westlake demonstrated that they can take an AI-assisted design drug for COVID
02:09in a record amount of time, from zero to approval, and here what's important is the approval,
02:18because actually designing a drug in a matter of days or hours, it's not an untrivial task.
02:24We do it routinely.
02:26But getting the drug to approval, it is a very difficult process.
02:32It's important to note that this is done for COVID, and Pfizer has done that in the U.S. in
02:39the past.
02:40The target is very well characterized and known, M-Pro.
02:44So it's not a novel target.
02:46But the fact that they managed to get this approval, it's absolutely phenomenal,
02:51and it's actually, I would say, it will go into history books of AI-powered drug discovery.
02:57I had the program for M-Pro as well.
03:00We went through phase one, and then just for commercial purposes, commercial reasons,
03:05decided to abandon the project, kind of shelve it, because COVID was gone,
03:11and it's very difficult to conduct those clinical trials.
03:15But the fact that Westlake came out and got the approval and persisted, it's great.
03:21It gives patients optionality and also demonstrates that, you know,
03:26you can go through the regulatory approval process so quickly.
03:29Well, let me ask you, if I may, sorry, if I may, because we're a little bit pushed for time.
03:35So you work extensively with China.
03:37What is China getting right here?
03:39And would you say it's the head of the U.S. and Europe?
03:45It's a tricky question, because if I give you an honest answer,
03:49I might not be viewed positively by my colleagues.
03:53So I think that China presents a wonderful kind of ecosystem,
04:02which incorporates perfect infrastructure, massive talent, very hardworking talent,
04:10that I know is when we are fighting death or diseases,
04:15it's not about work-life balance, it's about life-life balance.
04:18So people work hard and also favourable policies.
04:23So people do not create unnecessary roadblocks.
04:26And also lots of private capital is going into the field.
04:31People are scaling.
04:32So now in many areas of, let's say, low to moderate novelty,
04:37where you need to just cost down and scale,
04:41there you cannot do anywhere else, fast and cheap.
04:45Good to know.
04:46So we can do it in India, potentially, but not the entire cycle.
04:50Dr. Javrunko, thank you so much for your time.
04:52I'm sorry we have to leave it there.
04:53Obviously, we could talk about this a lot longer.
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