Insilico Medicine Unveils Sixth-Generation AI-Powered Robotic Lab to Accelerate Drug Discovery

On the afternoon of December 29, Insilico Medicine, an AI-driven biotechnology company powered by its end-to-end artificial intelligence platform, held the “Life Star – Launch Ceremony for the Sixth-Generation Intelligent Robotics Laboratory” at Suzhou BioBAY (Suzhou Industrial Park Biopharmaceutical Development Zone), officially unveiling the world’s first fully automated robotics laboratory assisted by AI-driven decision-making. Focusing on target discovery, compound screening, personalized drug development, and translational medicine research, this intelligent robotics laboratory aims to efficiently transform the drug discovery process, comprehensively improve the success rate of drug R&D, and accelerate the fulfillment of unmet clinical needs.

 (From left to right) Shi Long, Partner at Warburg Pincus; Feng Ren, Co-CEO and Chief Scientific Officer at Insilico Medicine; Ni Qian, Member of the Party Working Committee and Deputy Director of the Administrative Committee of Suzhou Industrial Park; Alex Zhavoronkov, Founder and Co-CEO of Insilico Medicine; and Yin Jianguo, Chairman and President of Suzhou Industrial Park Bio-Bay Development Co., Ltd., jointly unveiled the ceremony.

Ni Qian, Member of the Party Working Committee and Deputy Director of the Administrative Committee of Suzhou Industrial Park; Yin Jianguo, Chairman and President of Suzhou Industrial Park BioBAY Development Co., Ltd.; and Shi Long, Partner at Warburg Pincus, were invited to attend the event and jointly participate in the unveiling ceremony. Dr. Liu Jiapeng, Founder and CEO of X-Image Technology, and Dr. Evelyne Bischof, Associate Chief Physician at Renji Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University, were invited to share cutting-edge insights on the theme “Empowering the Biopharmaceutical Industry with New Technologies.” Liang Yingyu, Managing Partner at Qiming Venture Partners; Cai Wei, Head of Boston Consulting Group China; Yang Xiaolong, Partner at Sinovation Ventures; Cai Xiang, Managing Director for China at Prosperity7 Ventures; Wu Jing, Executive General Manager at CPE Yuanfeng; and Dr. Yu Tao, Executive Director at Lilly Asia Ventures, extended their congratulations via video messages.

From high-throughput screening to automated islands and the generation of machine learning-ready data, automation is ubiquitous in the biopharmaceutical industry. To date, fifth-generation biology laboratories have achieved comprehensive automation, eliminating human bias and interference, integrating multiple workflows, and generating high-quality data suitable for machine learning. Building on this foundation, Insilico Medicine incorporates AI-assisted decision-making, deeply integrating artificial intelligence with automation, robotics, and biological capabilities to create a new generation of intelligent robotic laboratories.

Dr. Alex Zhavoronkov, Founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine“He stated, ‘We aim to propel our biology laboratory to a new milestone. Insilico Medicine’s laboratory features an AI-powered brain, a body of fully automated equipment, and a chassis composed of various composite robots. This AI brain has been trained and validated through Insilico Medicine’s internal projects and draws upon years of collaborative experience with multinational pharmaceutical companies. It can engage in systematic learning based on provided information to assist in decision-making for target discovery and identification. Within the intelligent laboratory, it will efficiently generate target hypotheses, design automated experiments and workflows, and identify optimal targets based on experimental feedback.’”

The Intelligent Robotics Laboratory has created a closed-loop system by integrating Insilico Medicine’s self-developed Pharma.AI artificial intelligence drug discovery platform with fully automated biological experimental modules.

Specifically, the laboratory first generates target hypotheses for specific diseases using the PandaOmics target discovery platform. It then leverages six fully automated functional modules—sample management and quality control, compound management, automated cell culture, high-throughput screening, high-content cellular imaging, and next-generation sequencing—to perform early-stage drug discovery biological experiments that were traditionally conducted manually. These experiments include target validation, high-throughput hit screening, hit-to-lead optimization, lead-to-preclinical candidate confirmation, and translational medicine research. Meanwhile, the high-quality data generated throughout this end-to-end process will serve as a robust supplement to existing data resources, further training and optimizing artificial intelligence platforms and supporting the development of Insilico Medicine’s biological data factory.

Dr. Feng Ren, Co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Insilico Medicine“He stated that target identification is the starting point of new drug development, and the inability to identify suitable targets represents one of the major challenges currently facing the biopharmaceutical industry. In response, Insilico Medicine has proposed a comprehensive solution through its AI-driven robotic laboratory: first, to facilitate the efficient identification and validation of ideal targets; second, to evaluate and analyze the activity and druggability of compounds binding to these targets; and additionally, to assist in biomarker discovery and mechanistic studies during preclinical and translational medicine research. Currently, the AI-driven robotic laboratory has already commenced internal research projects, and the company looks forward to empowering academic and commercial partners across the upstream and downstream ecosystem in the near future, thereby truly helping scientists realize their dreams of new drug development.”

Insilico Medicine, founded in 2014, is among the earliest artificial intelligence (AI)-driven pharmaceutical companies. It has built a powerful and efficient AI-powered drug discovery and development platform, Pharma.AI, which empowers key steps in early-stage drug discovery. Since 2021, leveraging the Pharma.AI platform, Insilico Medicine has identified 10 preclinical candidate compounds. These include AI-discovered candidates with novel targets and structures, as well as AI-designed candidates with optimal properties for known targets, covering multiple disease areas such as fibrosis, immuno-oncology, inflammation, and COVID-19.

Currently, Insilico Medicine is continuously exploring the potential applications of intelligent automation in data processing and new drug development, aiming to revolutionize drug discovery with next-generation artificial intelligence and robotics, thereby injecting new momentum into cross-industry integrated innovation and digital-driven advancement.

Insilico Medicine is a clinical-stage drug discovery company powered by end-to-end artificial intelligence (AI). By connecting biology, chemistry, and clinical trial analytics through next-generation AI systems, and leveraging modern machine learning techniques such as deep generative models, reinforcement learning, and transformer models, the company has built a robust and efficient AI-driven drug discovery platform. This platform enables the identification of novel targets and the generation of candidate drugs with specific molecular structures. Insilico Medicine focuses on areas of unmet medical need, including cancer, fibrosis, immunology, central nervous system disorders, and aging-related diseases, to advance and accelerate innovative drug development.