image: Mikule is an accomplished scientist with 18 years of drug development expertise who previously served as Head of Business Development and Alliance Management at Viridian Therapeutics.
Credit: Insilico Medicine
Clinical-stage generative artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery company Insilico Medicine has appointed Keith Mikule, PhD, as Vice President (VP) of Business Development. Based in Boston, Dr. Mikule will work closely with Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, founder and CEO, Feng Ren, PhD, co-CEO and Cheif Scientific Officer, and Michelle Chen, PhD, Chief Business Officer, to drive business development activities and operation strategies to support Insilico's continued growth.
“With a significant pipeline of assets in cancer and other disease areas designed using our generative AI platform, we’re eager to continue our partnerships in order to advance more of these into and through clinical trials, and look forward to having Dr. Mikule’s support and long-time pharma experience,” says Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine.
Mikule is an accomplished scientist with 18 years of drug development expertise who previously served as Head of Business Development and Alliance Management at Viridian Therapeutics where he led processes that delivered both out-license and in-license transactions. Prior to Viridian, he was a Vice President at Boston Pharmaceuticals, where he co-led transactions valued at over $2.4B. He also served as a senior principal scientist at Tesaro (acquired by GSK), where he led preclinical and translational investigations that supported the global approval of Niraparib/Zejula for ovarian cancer and co-led a team responsible for strategic partnerships to discover novel immuno-oncology therapeutics.
“As a scientist with a long-time track record in the pharmaceutical industry, I recognize the enormous value that AI brings to the drug discovery and development process,” Mikule says. “Insilico has developed an incredibly robust pipeline and I look forward to driving new partnership opportunities.”
Mikule received his PhD in Cell and Developmental Biology from the University of Colorado and did his post-doctoral training at the University of Massachusetts.
Insilico Medicine is a pioneer in utilizing generative AI for drug discovery and development, and has delivered breakthroughs for healthcare in multiple disease areas, including fibrosis, cancer, immunology and aging-related diseases. Since 2021, Insilico has nominated 18 preclinical candidates in its comprehensive portfolio of over 30 assets and has advanced six pipelines to the clinical stage. Most recently, the company published a history of its lead AI-discovered and AI-designed drug for idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, currently in Phase II clinical trials, in Nature Biotechnology.
About Insilico Medicine
Insilico Medicine, a global clinical-stage biotechnology company powered by generative AI, connects biology, chemistry, and clinical trial analysis using next-generation AI systems. The company has developed AI platforms that utilize deep generative models, reinforcement learning, transformers, and other modern machine learning techniques for novel target discovery and generating novel molecular structures with desired properties. Insilico Medicine is developing breakthrough solutions to discover and develop innovative drugs for cancer, fibrosis, immunity, central nervous system diseases, infectious diseases, autoimmune diseases, and aging-related diseases. www.insilico.com