Metabolic disease drug development specialist THPharm is pursuing a strategy to expand treatment scope (indications) through bio-AI-based “reverse engineering” in collaboration with global AI drug discovery company Insilico Medicine.

“Reverse engineering” is a technique that, unlike the conventional approach of first specifying a particular disease and then searching for candidate substances from scratch, starts from drug data for which basic pharmacological information has already been secured and works backward to identify new diseases in which the drug may act. It is attracting attention as an alternative to enhance the efficiency of R&D and reduce trial and error in development.

The two companies are building an analytical framework using Insilico Medicine’s bio-AI platform “PandaOmics.” They are conducting integrated analyses of drug targets, literature, and gene expression data for metabolic disease candidates, and have initially secured 16 public data sets and 269 samples to verify which disease mechanisms and biomarkers are associated with the pharmacological effects observed in the preclinical stage.

THPharm plans to establish an analysis model starting with its metabolic disease asset currently in global Phase 3 clinical trials, and then extend application to follow-up candidates based on its drug delivery system (DDS). Through this, the company will prioritize heart failure, fatty liver disease, and obesity as initial evaluation targets and proceed with subsequent development.

Alex Zhavoronkov, CEO of Insilico Medicine, expressed expectations, saying, “AI extracts greater value from existing data.” THPharm CEO Han Tae-hee also stated, “The company will generate multiple development opportunities from a single drug asset, thereby simultaneously increasing asset value and development efficiency.”

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