Insilico Medicine Featured in Harvard Business School Case Study on Rentosertib

Rentosertib (ISM001-055) is a TNIK inhibitor Insilico developed for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), described as the first drug with both an AI-discovered target and an AI-designed molecule to reach Phase II. The page states preclinical candidate nomination occurred in December 2020, under 18 months from hypothesis (versus a 4.5-6 year industry average), after synthesizing only 78 molecules. In Phase IIa, the 60mg daily dose group showed a +98.4 mL FVC improvement versus -20.3 mL for placebo, and a 3.05% ppFVC improvement versus a -1.84% decline in placebo, plus a 2-point improvement on the Leicester Cough Questionnaire. Results were published in Nature Biotechnology (2024) and Nature Medicine (2025).

Insilico Medicine is an AI-native biotech running its own generative-chemistry drug-discovery platform (Pharma.AI), and licensing it through partnerships with major pharma companies.

This sits in the Build stage of the AI use-case lifecycle: Named examples from the foundation-model labs and platforms pharma teams use to actually construct, train and generate the model or application.