Insilico Medicine CEO Alex Zhavoronkov’s mad dash across the BIO International Convention in June attracted plenty of eyes. But the executive would prefer industry watchers gawk at the billions of dollars’ worth of deals his company has struck.
Alex Zhavoronkov, CEO of Insilico Medicine, slides into the tall chair next to me and hands over a postcard-sized list of clinical programs. “Do you want to buy some drugs?” he quips.
I decline, politely, but do examine the postcard. It looks just like Insilico’s website, a list of stacked green bars with disease names, targets and clinical trial phases. There’s also a collection of available AI programs—Insilico’s bread and butter, but not necessarily its most lucrative products.
It’s the pipeline deals that have made Insilico a rising star in biotech. Zhavoronkov was admittedly rushing around the BIO International Convention in June, meeting with dozens of executives. “Now people know us,” he said as he took a break for an interview with BioSpace at his company’s booth.
Insilico has always presented itself differently. The webpage is meant to look like a standard webstore interface, Zhavoronkov explains. This signals the tech industry’s creep into biotech, which Zhavoronkov is unapologetic about.
He believes that AI platform biotechs can’t survive using the industry’s typical model.
“You can make a deal or two to keep lights running, but the reality of life is that pharma companies are also very competent in AI,” Zhavoronkov explained.
To differentiate, Insilico made the partnering process as smooth as possible, putting all its programs online so that potential buyers can browse like they were shopping for a book or a gift. “We made platform partnerships very smooth. You basically buy it as a software. Some of those you can check out with your credit card.”
To keep the lights burning bright, Insilico focuses on high quality, first-in-class assets but does so at a high quantity, too. The company has signed myriad multi-billion partnerships this year alone, with Eli Lilly, Takeda, Exelixis, Boehringer Ingelheim and more all buying in.
“My new modus operandi, I want to achieve sustainable profitability. Imagine that for a company running 40 programs and investing massively into AI,” Zhavoronkov said. While he wouldn’t give specific guidance as to when Insilico might become profitable, the CEO promised that the company is “reasonably close.”
Insilico aims to partner its programs in the preclinical stage. The biotech has no plans to become a clinical or commercial company, the CEO explained.
“If any startup, or whoever, tells you that they are better than pharma in clinical trials using AI, absolute nonsense,” Zhavoronkov said. “I used to say that too. I regret it.” Pharma is clearly better at getting trial sites up and running, building relationships with investigators, engaging with regulators and so on, he said.
“Those massive machines, they actually are very well tailored for development, so for us we cannot compete with them,” Zhavoronkov said. “If we can kind of convince them to license early, that’s amazing.”
To start off the BIO conference, Insilico announced a partnership with China’s SK Biopharmaceuticals that could be worth up to $2.5 billion in milestones. This deal stood out because a China-based biotech was buying into tech elsewhere when the flow of deals in the pharma industry has been going the other way of late. Zhavoronkov noticed this too. It’s why Insilico set up shop there, with scientific and technology headquarters in Hong Kong and Shanghai.
He watched as pharmas signed very early-stage deals with Chinese companies and thought Insilico could do it too. “Until I understood that I couldn’t partner” because the company had been working on very novel targets, Zhavoronkov said.
If you’ve been watching Insilico closely, you’ll notice that some of its new programs have shifted to what Zhavoronkov calls the “low to moderate novelty space.” This deliberate shift has helped bring in some of the major deals. He pointed to the Lilly transaction, which could be worth up to $2.75 billion. The companies will work on oral drugs against a variety of undisclosed diseases.
“We are now on fire. I had to run here, and I will have to run out of here, because we are basically the ultimate AI drug dealer, so to speak,” Zhavoronkov said.
The CEO was joined by four Insilico colleagues with similar meeting agendas doing the same across the massive San Diego Convention Center at BIO. Zhavoronkov knew that his hustle had been noticed—he even caught someone filming a video of his mad dash across the conference floor.
And if interested buyers couldn’t squeeze into the Insilico employees’ busy schedules, they could use the company’s newly created AI chat bot to initiate business inquiries. It’s a whole new world of biotech drug development.
“That’s why I actually am not shy to run from place to place. You can see me running and people are making fun of it. . . . I’m not sorry about that, because this is the most important show,” Zhavoronkov said. “Every hour is important.”
And he promised that Insilico would have plenty to report from his hustle at BIO. “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
