Biotech begins human trials with drug discovered using AI

Verge says ALS therapy is one of the first to be developed by a tech-enabled platform

A biotech backed by Merck, Eli Lilly and private equity group BlackRock says it has begun one of the first clinical trials in humans of a drug discovered using artificial intelligence to analyse a vast database of brain tissue.

Verge Genomics, which was founded by Alice Zhang, a 33-year-old former neuroscience doctoral student at University of California, told the Financial Times that it has dosed its first patient with a novel therapy named VRG50635 to target ALS, a neurodegenerative disease for which there is no known cure.

To read more, go to this Financial Times article by Jamie Smyth, https://www.ft.com/content/0006ae3f-7064-4aa6-98cd-8912f544acc5z (subscription required)