Insilico Medicine


Insilico Medicine is an American biotechnology company based in Rockville, Maryland in Johns Hopkins University’s Emerging Technology Centers. The company combines genomics, big data analysis, and deep learning for in silico drug discovery.

History

CEO Alex Zhavoronkov founded Insilico Medicine in 2014, as an alternative to animal testing for research and development programs in the pharmaceutical industry. By using artificial intelligence and deep-learning techniques, Insilico is able to analyze how a compound will affect cells and what drugs can be used to treat the cells in addition to possible side effects. Through its Pharma.AI division, the company provides machine learning services to different pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and skin care companies. Insilico is known for hiring mainly through hackathons such as their own molhack online hackathon.
The company has multiple collaborations in the applications of next-generation artificial intelligence technologies such as the generative adversarial networks and reinforcement learning to the generation of novel molecular structures with desired properties. In conjunction with Alan Aspuru-Guzik's group at Harvard, they have published a journal article about an improved GAN architecture for molecular generation which combines GANs, reinforcement learning, and a differentiable neural computer.
Insilico's recent paper in Nature Communications describing the iPANDA dimensionality reduction algorithm included collaborators from 11 institutions. In 2017, Insilico was named one of the Top 5 AI companies by NVIDIA for its potential for social impact. Insilico also has R&D resources in Belgium, Russia, and the UK and hires talent through “hackathons” and other local competitions. By 2017, InSilico had raised $8.26 million in funding from investors including Deep Knowledge Ventures, JHU A-Level Capital, Jim Mellon, and Juvenescence.