BIOiSIM assigns ‘credit scores’ to drug candidates 

VeriSIM Life, a San Francisco-based startup, has created BIOiSIM, an AI-powered platform that simulates drug compound behavior in the human body by acting like a virtual laboratory. It assigns each a predictive “credit score” predicting its viability for drug development.

“It’s like a FICO score for drug development,” founder and CEO Dr. Jo Varshney said. BIOiSIM’s scoring system draws from an inferential search space of more than 1 billion drug-like compounds and capacity to model 800 billion total simulation scenarios powered by 10 billion deep learning neural network effects. The vast search space of drug-like compounds and data processing capabilities enable it to evaluate numerous factors such as its potency, selectivity, and safety profile to determine a drug’s overall likelihood of success.

BIOiSIM focuses on predictive insights

The considerable scale of data allows for a comprehensive analysis of drug compounds, bolstering the pr…

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How VeriSIM Life’s BIOiSIM platform could reduce pharma’s reliance on animal testing

Founded in 2017, VeriSIM Life (San Francisco) has a quest to use biosimulation technology to streamline drug discovery and development. The company’s BIOiSIM virtual drug development engine helps pharma and biotech companies optimize R&D spending.

The company’s founder and CEO, Dr. Jo Varshney, also wants to help reduce the need for animal testing in drug development. The industry’s “reliance on animal testing has been ridiculously bad for the industry, if not horrible in terms of time and costs,” said Varshney, a veterinarian.

Varshney sees the Senate’s unanimous passage of the FDA Modernization Act 2.0 as a good omen. The legislation, if signed into law, would reduce animal testing in the coming years.

Other factors bode well for reducing the industry’s reliance on animal testing. First, computational resources continue to become less expensive and more powerful, making AI drug development models increasing…

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