An experimental drug called Rentosertib, created by biotech company Insilico Medicine using artificial intelligence, has shown an unexpected effect. It was developed against an incurable lung disease, but during the tests, the indicators by which scientists estimate the biological age of the body changed in patients.
An experimental drug called Rentosertib, created by biotech company Insilico Medicine using artificial intelligence, has shown an unexpected effect. It was developed against an incurable lung disease, but during the tests, the indicators by which scientists estimate the biological age of the body changed in patients.
Bloomberg reports this.
Rentosertib is being developed to treat idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, an incurable disease in which scar tissue forms in the lungs, making it gradually more difficult for a person to breathe.
First, AI helped find a protein that might be involved in the development of the disease and that could be tried to be blocked with drugs. So the AI system found the protein TNIK, which is associated with the development of fibrosis, as well as with some aging processes. Then another system from the company, Chemistry42, helped develop a molecule that could block TNIK. After further selection and testing, they obtained the experimental drug Rentosertib.
After testing Rentosertib, the researchers decided to further test whether the drug affected signs of aging. They analyzed blood samples from patients and estimated their biological age based on changes in the levels of various proteins using several so-called “aging clocks.” For example, the machine learning model ProtAge estimates a person’s age based on a set of proteins in the blood, and OrganAge has models that use the same data to estimate age or the risk of death associated with it.
In patients receiving Rentosertib, these scores shifted toward a younger biological age on average, while in the placebo group there was little to no such effect. By one method, the difference was about six years.
Previously, dev.ua wrote that the world's first vaccine developed entirely with the help of AI has passed human trials.
