Lots of yummy quotables at Human[X] this week, Part I

The eminently quotable Alex Zhavoronkov, the fearless ⚡ founder and CEO of Insilico Medicine, presented at hashtag#humanx on the same day Insilico announced $110m in funding (link) to propel it to a Hong Kong IPO and officially made the company a unicorn 🦄 . But come on, Insilico is a unicorn based on its software business alone: it is (in my biased opinion) worth a lot more its pipeline is factored in. I have to confess that I also like the overarching aging angle, whereby a lot of their pipeline has been discovered looking for ways to address aging.

In any event, Alex is not exactly shy when sharing his views and it is hard to pick just one or two but here are a couple:

1️⃣ AI+Australia+China is the winning combination. AI for discovery, China for the best quality:cost ratio, speed and clinical trials are kind of obvious. Australia because of the unusual incentives for Phase I trials and their acceptability with the EMA and FDA.

2️⃣ "When you hit clinical development, you have to move at the speed of traffic", a great way to convey that you can go fast (and super fast with AI) but human clinical studies are rate-limited by regulations and by the time it takes to actually run it.

3️⃣ "The FDA is not your enemy". I couldn't agree more, they want you to succeed in addressing patient needs but are restricted by an antiquated system.