How Can Startups Like Genesis Therapeutics Make New Medicines Faster and Cheaper?

Is AI the Secret to Curing Untreatable Diseases? A Look Inside Genesis Therapeutics

Finding new medicines is a long, hard road. For many sicknesses, there are still no good treatments. It can take more than ten years and billions of dollars to make a single new drug. A lot of that time is spent just looking for the right key to fit a very specific lock in the human body. But what if we could make that search much faster? A new kind of company is using artificial intelligence (AI) to do just that.

Genesis Therapeutics, a biotech startup based in California, is one of the leaders in this field. They are using powerful computers and smart AI to find and create new drugs in a way that was never possible before. This technology is not just making things a little faster; it is changing the entire process of how we discover medicines for some of the toughest diseases, including cancer and problems with our immune system.

How AI Is Helping to Find New Medicines

Imagine trying to find one special key that can open a very complicated lock. Now, imagine you have a box with billions and billions of keys, and most of them look almost the same. This is the challenge that drug hunters face. The “lock” is a protein in our body that is causing a disease. The “key” is a molecule that can fit into that protein and stop it from working incorrectly.

This is where Genesis Therapeutics’ special AI platform, called GEMS (Genesis Exploration of Molecular Space), comes in.

Seeing the “Lock”

The first step is to understand the lock. GEMS is very good at figuring out the 3D shape of proteins in the body, even when they are hard to see with older tools.

Making Billions of “Keys”

Once GEMS knows the shape of the lock, it can start designing keys. It doesn’t just look for existing keys; it creates brand new ones. The AI can generate ideas for billions of different molecules that might fit the target protein. This is a huge step forward because it allows scientists to explore options that have never been considered before.

Picking the Best Keys

GEMS doesn’t just create molecules; it also predicts how well they will work. The AI can check to see if a molecule will be a strong fit for the protein (its potency) and if it is likely to be safe for a person to take (its toxicity). This helps the scientists focus only on the most promising ideas, saving a lot of time and money.

By using AI to create and test these molecules inside a computer, Genesis can find potential new drugs for diseases that were once considered “untreatable” or “undruggable.” These are often problems where scientists struggled for years to find any key that would work.

A Sign of Trust from Big Companies

Building a new drug is a team effort. While startups like Genesis are great at finding the initial ideas, they often work with bigger, more established pharmaceutical companies to run the large tests and bring the medicine to people. Genesis has been very successful in building these relationships.

The company has signed contracts with three large pharmaceutical companies that are worth a total of $700 million. One of the most recent partnerships is with Gilead Sciences, a well-known leader in making medicines. This deal, valued at over $35 million upfront with more to come, is a strong signal that major players in the industry believe in what Genesis is doing. These partnerships provide the money and expertise needed to turn an AI-designed molecule into a real-life treatment.

On top of these contracts, Genesis has also raised more than $300 million from investors. This funding helps the company grow its team, improve its GEMS platform, and start working on its own new drug ideas, with a special focus on fighting cancer and immune diseases.

The Growing World of AI Drug Discovery

Genesis Therapeutics is part of a much larger shift happening across the medical world. The use of AI in finding new drugs is growing quickly. In the last two years, online searches for “AI drug discovery” have gone up by nearly 200%. This shows that more and more people are becoming aware of this powerful new technology.

The reason for this excitement is simple: AI promises to make drug development better, faster, and cheaper. One AI biotech company has said they are creating new drugs in half the time and at a tenth of the cost of old methods. While every company’s results are different, the trend is clear. Right now, there are at least 165 new drugs being developed with the help of AI, many of them aimed at treating cancer and brain disorders.

Other Innovators in the Field

While Genesis is a major name, it is not the only company using AI to reshape medicine. This is a sign of a healthy and growing field where different smart people are trying new ideas.

Atomic AI

This startup is focused on a different kind of target in the body: RNA. RNA is like a messenger that carries instructions for making proteins. Atomic AI’s platform is designed to find and develop drugs that can target RNA, which could open up a whole new way of treating diseases. It has shown great success even though it learned from the structures of only 18 RNA molecules.

Eikon Therapeutics

Eikon combines special microscopes and robots with AI software. This allows them to watch single molecules moving around inside living cells in real-time. By seeing how different molecules behave, their platform can help them find new drugs and understand exactly how they work. Eikon currently has 12 drugs in its pipeline that it is developing.

Enveda Biosciences

This company takes a unique approach by looking to nature for answers. They use AI to search through a massive database of more than 38,000 plant species. Their technology helps them find natural chemicals that have been used in traditional medicine for centuries and figure out if they can be turned into modern drugs. Their database connects these plants to 12,000 different symptoms, helping them find new starting points for medicines.

These companies, along with Genesis, show that there are many different ways that AI can be used to find the medicines of the future. By using computers to do the heavy lifting of searching for the right molecule, scientists can focus their efforts on the most promising candidates, bringing hope for new treatments to patients faster than ever before.