An experimental drug designed using AI has produced measurable shifts toward a younger biological-age profile in patients.
Developed by Insilico Medicine, the drug - rentosertib - was initially engineered to treat idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a progressive, age-associated lung-scarring disease. When researchers analyzed blood samples from a Phase IIa clinical trial, they applied six proteomic profiling "aging clocks" among 42 participants. All six detected reductions in predicted biological age, whereas the placebo group showed little change or slight increases. The most pronounced and consistent effects emerged around week four of treatment.
The study was authored by Insilico with academic collaborators from Harvard, Stanford, the Broad Institute, RWTH Aachen, Peking University and Westlake University.
Insilico used AI not only to identify a specific enzyme (TNIK) linked to both fibrosis and aging pathways, but also to generate and optimize the specific molecule designed to inhibit it. That dual application makes rentosertib a rare clinical test of AI uncovering a target case and building new therapeutics from scratch.
In the earlier Phase IIa, patients in the 60mg once-daily arm recorded a mean improvement in forced vital capacity of 98.4 milliliters against a mean decline of 20.3 milliliters on placebo. FVC declines with age in healthy people over 65 at roughly 20 to 50 milliliters a year, which is why Insilico treats it as a physiological aging marker as well a
