ABOVE: MODIFIED FROM © istock.com, MARK KOLPAKOV
In mid-January, as cases of a mysterious illness climbed in China and began to appear in other parts of the world, Alex Zhavoronkov realized that this outbreak was becoming a major public health problem. As founder and chief executive officer of Insilico Medicine, a biotech startup based in Hong Kong—where measures to reduce the disease’s spread were already beginning to be put in place—he began to wonder what his company could do to help.
Insilico had never tackled viral diseases before; the company’s focus was on noninfectious conditions such as cancer, immunological diseases, and fibrosis. But Zhavoronkov realized that Insilico’s approach, which applies artificial intelligence (AI) for rapid novel drug discovery, could help identify potential therapeutics to fight the virus we now know as SARS-CoV-2.
Everyone, whether requested by the company priorities or just their own values, was willing to work endlessly around ...
