“We’ve got AI strategy combined with AI imagination,” says Insilico CEO Alex Zhavoronkov, who compares the operation of GENTRL to the AlphaGo machine learning system that Google’s Deepmind developed to challenge champion Go players.
The company's original philosophy was about using deep learning to train neural networks to go through large libraries of molecules to find drug targets. Shortly after founding the company, however, Zhavoronkov became fascinated with“We thought, ‘Can we make machines imagine new molecules with particular properties instead of screening large vendor libraries?’” he says.
The current paper has its origin in a challenge put to the company by its colleagues in the chemistry world. They ask the company to use its system to develop potential drugs that can inhibit discoidin domain receptor 1 activity. DDR1 is an enzyme that is involved in fibrosis, and though it’s not yet clear if it regulates those processes, inhibiting its activity is being investigated as a possible therapy.