Insilico Medicine and China Medical System Holdings Limited (CMS) have announced a series of collaborations to accelerate drug discovery in central nervous system (CNS) and autoimmune diseases using artificial intelligence. The partnership will combine Insilico’s AI‑driven discovery platform with CMS’s R&D and clinical development expertise to advance no fewer than two joint programs.

The collaboration framework is designed to integrate resources across the entire drug development value chain, from target identification and small-molecule design through preclinical validation, clinical strategy, regulatory planning, and commercialization. Insilico will contribute its AI-enabled capabilities to efficiently screen and optimize candidate molecules, while CMS will leverage its clinical development networks and regulatory expertise to advance projects from preclinical stages into clinical trials.

Feng Ren, co-CEO and chief scientific officer of Insilico Medicine, said: “This strategic collaboration with CMS is a key step for Insilico Medicine in advancing our mission of ‘AI‑empowered, full‑lifecycle innovative drug R&D’. Under this collaboration framework, we look forward to leveraging resource sharing and joint decision‑making to significantly shorten the development cycle of high-potential innovative drugs, enhance translational efficiency and clinical success rates, and accelerate the journey of more innovative molecules from ‘proof of concept’ to truly ‘benefiting patients’.

“Going forward, the two parties will continue to deepen multi-dimensional collaboration in pipeline layout, clinical strategy, and global partnerships, further improving the accessibility of innovative medicines, providing patients with more differentiated treatment options.”

CMS chairman and CEO Lam Kong said: “Insilico Medicine’s leadership in AI drug discovery platforms and data-driven R&D is strategically complementary to CMS’s capabilities in innovative R&D and clinical translation. We look forward to further deepening our collaboration on the existing foundation to accelerate the delivery of more clinically meaningful innovations to patients with greater speed and quality, improving the accessibility and affordability of medicines and better meeting the growing clinical needs.”

Insilico’s AI approach has previously nominated 20 preclinical candidates between 2021 and 2024, with an average timeline of 12–18 months from project initiation to preclinical candidate nomination, compared with the typical 4.5-year timeline for early-stage drug discovery. Each program required the synthesis and testing of only 60–200 molecules, highlighting the efficiency of AI-powered R&D.