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The clinical-stage company Verseon (Fremont, California) is unique among companies exploring the use of AI in drug discovery given its focus on what it calls the “uncharted” chemical space. While Big Pharma companies typically test compounds from their collections for specific diseases, these collections often have constraints and overlapping compounds. Adityo Prakash, CEO of Verseon, estimates that researchers have developed about seven million chemically distinct compounds globally in the past century. But compared to that figure, the number of mappable compounds based on organic synthesis principles is a staggering 10^33. Verseon is exploring uncharted chemical spaceAdityo Prakash
Prakash emphasizes that while most AI companies involved in drug discovery focus on the narrower subset contained in current libraries, Verseon has …