Insilico Medicine advances Middle East push with UAE AI drug discovery deal

Hong Kong-listed Insilico Medicine has signed a cooperation agreement with the United Arab Emirates’ drug regulator to advance the use of its artificial intelligence tools in drug discovery across the region, even as geopolitical tensions escalate in the Middle East.Shares of Insilico rose as much as 12.8 per cent in morning trading on Thursday before paring gains to close 8.6 per cent higher at HK$56.10. The advance outpaced the benchmark Hang Seng Index, which edged up 0.3 per cent.The agreement was reached during the World Health Expo in Dubai between February 9 and 12, about two weeks before the United States and Israel launched joint military strikes on Iran on February 28.Those strikes triggered retaliatory missile and drone attacks targeting cities hosting US military assets across the Gulf, including Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The Hang Seng Index has fallen about 5 per cent since the escalation, ending Thursday at 25,321.Despite the regional tensions, Shaikha Al Mazrouei, director of the Reference National Laboratory Drug Department at the Emirates Drug Establishment, said the partnership would expand the use of advanced AI tools in pharmaceutical research.“The collaboration will enable the use of advanced AI platforms based on generative models and reinforcement learning algorithms to analyse biological, chemical and clinical data,” she said in a statement.