Insilico Medicine, TARA Biosystems announce drug discovery partnership

Insilico Medicine, a Maryland-based AI company, is partnering with TARA Biosystems to discover and develop new therapies for cardiac disease, the companies announced Monday.

Based in New York, TARA Biosystems focuses on providing human cardiac tissue models for use in drug discovery and risk assessments, while Insilico Medicine uses AI to support drug discovery and aging research. Together, the companies plan to combine their expertise in an effort to lower costs and quicken the drug discovery and development process for the cardiac disease and diseases associated with cardiac muscle aging.

“TARA’s cardiac tissue models are the next best thing to a human heart,” Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, chief executive officer of Insilico Medicine, said in a prepared statement. “This kind of partnership between AI companies and engineered biology companies is very new, and we are extremely excited to partner with TARA Biosystems—a team with a good heart.”

The partnership is Insilico Medicine’s latest effort to boost drug discovery. Last month, the company asked researchers to contribute to a new platform, with the hopes of increasing the pace of drug discovering and facilitating the sharing of new datasets and models.

The company is also one of the founding members of the Alliance for Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, which is expected to hold its inaugural meeting this week.

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Danielle covers Clinical Innovation & Technology as a senior news writer for TriMed Media. Previously, she worked as a news reporter in northeast Missouri and earned a journalism degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She's also a huge fan of the Chicago Cubs, Bears and Bulls. 

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