Model Medicines to Present End-to-End AI Drug Discovery Platform at Fierce Biotech Week 2026 in Boston

SAN DIEGO — Model Medicines, an AI-first biotechnology company developing first-in-class therapeutics against multi-indication biological choke points, today announced that it will participate in Fierce Biotech Week 2026. Model Medicines was previously named to Fierce Medtech’s Fierce 15. This recognition placed Model Medicines in the company of Fierce 15 alumni and leaders in AI-driven drug development, including Recursion Pharmaceuticals, Insilico Medicine, Genesis Therapeutics, and Generate Biomedicines.

The Fierce Biotech Week panel provides a forum to share how Model Medicines has operationalized AI as a single end-to-end engine across target selection, drug discovery and pre-IND development. Daniel Haders, PhD, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer, will join the panel "Scaling AI Across the Biopharma Enterprise" alongside Rahul Gupta, President of GATC Health, and Alexander Pickett, Managing Director at Juvenescence. The panel will be moderated by Melina Fan, PhD, Co-founder and Chief Innovation Officer of Addgene.

Fierce Biotech Week 2026 Panel

Session: Scaling AI Across the Biopharma Enterprise

Date: Thursday, May 14, 2026

Time: 9:15–9:55 a.m. ET

Location: Picasso 1 & 2

The panel aims to explore how biopharma is moving beyond isolated AI pilots toward integrated platforms that reshape capital allocation, asset prioritization, and partnership strategy.

"We focus our end-to-end AI engine on the discovery and solving of biological choke points. These are the small set of functionally indispensable, evolutionarily conserved mechanisms that multiple diseases depend on, and that the field has long considered too difficult or impossible to drug," said Daniel Haders, PhD, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Model Medicines. "With AI, we identify these choke points and the novel chemistry to drug them. The result is an engineered pipeline-in-a-pill. MDL-001 and MDL-4102 are proof that we can do it at scale.”

Model Medicines is among the few AI-native biotechnology companies operating across the entire drug discovery and development value chain.

Target discovery and the drugging of the undruggable. Model Medicines uses AI to interrogate biological and chemical systems for conserved molecular choke points and medicinal chemistry selectivity profiles that traditional approaches have deemed impossible. The company's virology program is grounded in a first-of-its-kind discovery: the structural conservation of the RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) Thumb-1 allosteric pocket across viral families. The same target-discovery framework powers the company's transcriptional control program, where Model Medicines is pursuing the long-standing challenge of selectively inhibiting BRD4 without engaging BRD2 or BRD3. By using AI to map and exploit subtle structural differences across the BET family, Model Medicines identified a tractable path to a potent and selective BRD4 inhibitor. 

Ultra-large virtual screening (ULVS) and novel chemistry generation. Powered by its proprietary AI platform, Model Medicines recently conducted an unprecedented 325-billion-molecule virtual screen in a single 24-hour period^[1]. ULVS enables the rapid identification and generation of novel, IP-defensible chemistry against conserved targets at a scale that traditional screening cannot approach.  

Lead optimization and pre-IND development. The same end-to-end AI engine that identifies novel targets and novel chemistry also powers preclinical development with specialized preclinical models. These AI models predict pre-IND ADMET, safety, and developability properties, enabling Model Medicines to advance lead candidates into IND-enabling studies on accelerated timelines. The company recently demonstrated one subset of this capability, with AmesNet. This deep learning model for predicting Ames test mutagenicity demonstrated best-in-class performance across all benchmarked approaches in predicting chemical safety on out-of-domain data. AmesNet outperformed models from major organizations, including the FDA's DeepAmes (FDA/NCTR), ChemProp (MIT), GROVER (Baidu Research), and the University of Sydney^[2].

Model Medicines uses its end-to-end AI platform to discover, optimize, and de-risk its own wholly owned drug pipeline. At Fierce Biotech Week, the company looks to advance discussions on how it’s reshaping capital allocation, pipeline economics, and competitive strategy across biopharma. Model Medicines will highlight progress across its two lead drug candidates:

MDL-001 — a direct-acting, non-nucleoside, broad-spectrum antiviral targeting a conserved viral polymerase mechanism, with demonstrated preclinical activity across respiratory and hepatic viruses and high-risk co-infections. Model Medicines’ virology program, the discovery of the RdRp Thumb-1 site, and MDL-001 preclinical proof-of-concept data have been peer-reviewed, accepted and presented at IDWeek 2025^[3], AASLD 2025^[4], HepDART 2025, CROI 2026^[5], ESCMID Global 2026^[6], and SERVC 2026. The full preclinical data readout for MDL-001 can be found here. MDL-001 is currently completing IND-enabling studies. IND submission is targeted for late 2026, with clinical trials estimated to commence in early 2027.

MDL-4102 — a highly potent and selective BRD4 inhibitor with no measurable activity against BRD2 or BRD3. The program was optimized for BRD4 selectivity, transcriptional impact, and drug-like properties simultaneously. The discovery of MDL-4102 is a direct result of Model Medicines' 325-billion-molecule virtual screen. This record-breaking capability, enabled by the ultra-large virtual screen, led to the discovery of a next-generation BRD4 inhibitor.^[7] MDL-4102 is currently in IND-enabling studies. IND submission is targeted for 2027.

About Fierce Biotech Week 2026

Fierce Biotech Week convenes biotech and pharma executives, investors, scientists, and operators in Boston for a week of programming on the most consequential trends shaping the industry. The 2026 program brings together leaders across discovery, clinical development, manufacturing, business development, and corporate strategy to examine how the convergence of AI, capital, and biology is redefining the pace and economics of drug development. Program details are available at www.fiercebiotechweek.com.

About Model Medicines

Model Medicines is an AI-first biotechnology company engineering first-in-class small molecules that target the biological linchpins underlying disease. The company’s research spans infectious disease, oncology, and inflammation, with programs designed around conserved molecular choke points that drive multiple pathologies. Model Medicines has discovered a direct-acting, non-nucleoside, broad-spectrum antiviral (MDL-001) and a potent, selective and novel BRD4 inhibitor (MDL-4102). Its work demonstrates how large-scale computation can uncover entirely new classes of drugs once thought unreachable. Model Medicines is advancing a new generation of therapeutics that redefine what is possible in modern drug discovery. Learn more at www.modelmedicines.com.

Media Contact 

Patrick O’Neill

Head of Partnerships & Investor Relations

media@modelmedicines.com

www.modelmedicines.com