Using AI to “replicate” human cells and predict drug effects, “Huayuan Intelligence” received tens of millions of RMB in seed round financing

Text | Hu Xiangyun Editor | Hai Ruojing 36Kr learned that AI Virtual Cell (AIVC) company Huayuan Intelligent Technology has recently completed a tens of millions of RMB seed round financing. This round of financing is led by Mizuki Venture Capital, and the funds raised will be mainly used for iteration of the underlying technology of multi-modal sequencing, further expanding cooperation with top tertiary hospitals, and team expansion. In addition, the Huayuan Zhiyin team has planned to launch a new round of financing. The founding team of Huayuan Zhiyin is composed of senior pharmaceutical industry practitioners and computational biology R&D personnel. Experts from Shenzhen National Gene Bank and other units are invited to form a scientific advisory committee to form a team structure for scientific research and industry collaboration. Company CEO Du Runshi studied at the University of California, Los Angeles and is a serial entrepreneur in the field of AI; CTO Wang Yixuan is a doctoral student in computer science and engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She once took the lead in building the prediction model xTrimoSC Perturb for the transcriptional effects of gene perturbations at Baitu Biotechnology. In addition, Li Yu, assistant professor of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, serves as the chief AI scientist of Huayuan Intelligence. In the field of new drug research and development, "10 years, 1 billion US dollars" is a recognized dilemma. Among them, 90% of resources go to the human clinical trial stage, but in the end only about 10% of candidate drugs can successfully pass all clinical trials and be successfully launched. One of the core reasons for the ultra-high failure rate is the huge difference between animal experiments and the real physiological environment of the human body. So, can we simulate the real reaction of the drug after it enters the human body in a computer before investing high costs in human clinical trials, so as to reduce the failure rate of new drug development? Du Runshi believes that most traditional AI pharmaceutical companies focus on solving front-end R&D problems, that is, using AI to find potential disease-causing targets and generate compounds more efficiently. But this is equivalent to only optimizing the first step of "finding a drug", and it is impossible to fully predict whether the drug will be effective and have any side effects when it is used on people. The key to solving the problem is determining whether a certain drug is worthy of human trials. This is also the fundamental reason why Huayuan Intelligent Technology chose to develop its own Wise-Perturb cell drug perturbation application model and specialize in human drug efficacy prediction. Simple understanding, human beings are careful