"AI Drug Development That Dramatically Reduces Cost and Time Is Near"... 160 Clinical Trials Underway

[Financial News] "Artificial Intelligence (AI) presents an opportunity to significantly reduce the massive financial and time investments required for drug development."
Mati Gil, CEO of AION Labs, made this statement during his presentation titled "The Future of AI and Drug Development: Pharmaceutical Industry Changes Triggered by Artificial Intelligence" at the '2025 DIPS GLOBAL TECH CON' held at Walkerhill Hotel in Gwangjin, Seoul, on the 29th. He explained, "It typically takes more than $2 billion (about 2.9 trillion KRW) and over 10 years to deliver a new drug from the lab to patients, yet the success rate is less than 10%. This is why we need to dramatically improve success rates through AI."
In fact, in 2022, the American biotech company Insilico Medicine used its proprietary AI platform to discover a candidate treatment for fibrosis in just 46 days at a cost of about 200 million KRW. Traditionally, discovering such a candidate would take five years and cost several million dollars.
Mati Gil noted that during the COVID-19 pandemic, expectations for AI-driven drug development were overheated, leading to a prolonged period of disappointment. However, he emphasized that success in AI drug development is not far off. He stated, "So far, there have been no cases where regulatory agencies such as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have approved drugs designed by AI, but it is a matter of timing, not feasibility." He added, "As of this year, there are about 160 AI-designed drug candidates currently in clinical trials."
AION Labs, led by Mati Gil, is a platform that nurtures AI drug development startups. Global pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer Inc., AstraZeneca, and Teva Pharmaceuticals are collaborating with AI startups from the idea stage to jointly develop new drugs. AION Labs also provides computing environments through cloud partners like Amazon.com, Inc., and facilitates business operations for startups through venture capital investment.
Mati Gil introduced five startups supported by AION Labs. Denovai aims to design necessary target proteins using AI, starting from the fact that 90% of disease targets remain undiscovered. Leveraging disease-specific targets and data, Denovai has achieved results such as designing suitable antibody sequences within two weeks using AI. CassidyBio is developing personalized Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) therapies tailored to individual patient genes for the treatment of genetic diseases. Profit is focused on developing AI for small molecule discovery, based on the insight that diseases can be treated by finding effective small molecules even without knowing the structure of the target. Profit is currently collaborating with the Korean pharmaceutical company Dongbang FTL. Phase5 investigates which patients respond best in clinical trials using AI, aiming to optimize clinical success rates. In partnership with Pfizer Inc., Phase5 is working to increase clinical success rates by 30% and reduce development costs by 50%. Promise Bio is developing AI technology to analyze the degradation patterns of proteins after translation, in order to discover new disease mechanisms and biomarkers.
AION Labs is nurturing three AI drug development startups each year under its vision of 'changing the world.' Mati Gil highlighted that taking on seemingly impossible challenges is at the core of the health tech industry.
He remarked, "Since there are no cases where AI-developed drug candidates have actually been approved by regulatory agencies, some may believe that innovation in the AI pharmaceutical industry is impossible. However, just as AI has driven change in various fields, the era of offering new hope to patients is approaching." He emphasized, "Within the next 10 years, AI will lead the pharmaceutical industry."
kaya@fnnews.com Choi Hye-rim Reporter