Former Takeda CSO and a16z Bio + Health Founder to Guide Clinical Translation and Scaling of insitro’s ChemML™ Platform
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–insitro, the AI therapeutics company built on causal biology, today announced the appointment of two scientific advisors: Stephen Hitchcock, Ph.D., a preeminent drug development leader and former Chief Scientific Officer of Takeda, and Vijay Pande, Ph.D., co-founder of VZVC and, previously, founder and General Partner of Andreessen Horowitz’s Bio + Health fund.
Hitchcock and Pande will advise on the continued development and scaling of insitro’s AI-driven ChemML™ platform as it is deployed across insitro’s pipeline and partner programs. Their guidance will focus on translating compelling targets into the medicinal chemistry and preclinical development strategies required to advance therapeutics into clinical trials – connecting computational prediction with the realities of drug development at scale.
“Drug discovery often falters at the gap between biological promise and clinical reality,” said Daphne Koller, Ph.D., founder and CEO of insitro. “ChemML is designed to bridge that divide. By integrating computational prediction with high-throughput medicinal chemistry, we can rapidly create novel molecules that also solve for the complex pharmacological properties that determine a molecule’s success in patients – not just in the lab.”
“Steve brings deep experience navigating the complexities of drug development, while Vijay has been a pioneer in the use of machine learning for biology and chemistry,” Koller added. “Their combined perspective – spanning traditional R&D rigor and computational strategy – is critical as we advance our internal pipeline in metabolic disease and neuroscience, and work with strategic partners such as Bristol Myers Squibb and Eli Lilly.”
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Stephen Hitchcock, Ph.D., is a pharmaceutical R&D executive leader with more than 30 years of experience in biotech and large pharma (Takeda, Eli Lilly, and Amgen). As the former Chief Scientific Officer and Head of Global Research at Takeda, he directed the global research teams responsible for delivering clinical candidates against historically intractable targets across multiple therapeutic areas. He is currently a Venture Partner at 5AM Ventures and the CEO of Implexsys Bioscience.
“The ChemML platform distinguishes itself by moving beyond binding affinity to solve for the multiparametric pharmacological profile that drives safety and efficacy,” Hitchcock said. “This simultaneous optimization, particularly when applied to novel targets in challenging indications such as ALS – identified through insitro’s collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb – represents a fundamentally different approach to drug discovery. I believe this technology will enable scientists to drug targets that would otherwise remain intractable, particularly in areas like CNS disorders where pharmacological complexity has historically limited progress.”
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Vijay Pande, Ph.D., served as a Stanford University faculty member for 16 years – notably as the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Chemistry, Structural Biology, and Computer Science – where he pioneered the use of computational methods in biology and chemistry. He founded Folding@home, a distributed computing project that helped establish large-scale computation as a practical tool for biological research. Pande subsequently served as a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he founded the firm’s Bio + Health fund. He co-founded VZVC earlier this year to invest in companies leveraging technology to solve humanity’s biggest problems, including healthcare and care access.
“AI is transforming every dimension of our lives, yet its most profound potential lies in rewriting the trajectory of human health,” Pande said. “I am delighted to work with Steve and the insitro team as they advance this shift from descriptive science to predictive engineering. insitro has built the first true ‘closed loop’ system where high-quality data generation and model training reinforce one another. This structural advantage allows insitro to solve for clinical relevance at the very start of design, bridging the gap between computational promise and patient impact.”
The appointments follow several recent validation milestones for insitro’s integrated platform. The company expanded its collaboration with Bristol Myers Squibb in October to apply ChemML to a novel ALS target discovered in the partnership’s first phase – a deal with a potential value exceeding $2 billion. In September, insitro announced a partnership with Eli Lilly to build first-in-kind predictive ADMET models using data from 40 years of Lilly chemistry residing in Lilly’s TuneLab and validating ChemML as a core engine for the industry’s most difficult optimization challenges.
“For decades, drug discovery has been trapped in a cycle of elegant biochemistry yielding clinical disappointment,” said Philip Tagari, Chief Scientific Officer of insitro. “R&D teams optimize for binding affinity because it’s measurable, then confront the unmeasured complexity – brain penetration, metabolic stability, selectivity – only after molecules fail in vivo. ChemML inverts this entirely by treating pharmacology as a design constraint from the first iteration, solving simultaneously for the complete profile that determines therapeutic success. As we scale this approach across ALS, metabolic disease, and other intractable indications, Steve and Vijay bring the strategic perspective needed to bridge computational prediction with clinical reality, ensuring we build medicines that work in people, not just in silico.”
About insitro
insitro is the AI therapeutics company built on causal biology. By generating the largest integrated multi-modal corpus of human and cellular data and disentangling it through the lens of AI, we have created a platform that reveals how disease begins, progresses, and can be resolved. Our approach enables us to precisely identify genetic drivers, select the right targets, and use AI to design medicines that treat disease at its root. Focused on metabolic disease and neuroscience, our models create a self-learning loop that accelerates discovery and moves us closer to systematically eradicating grievous illness. insitro is backed by world-class investors and has brought in ~$800M in capital, including ~$150M from non-dilutive pharma partnerships including BMS, Lilly, and Gilead. Learn more at insitro.com.
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Media Contact
Eric McKeeby
eric@insitro.com