AI-designed drug appears to turn back the body's biological clock in early trial
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Insilico Medicine used generative AI to develop rentosertib, a drug originally intended for the lung disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. In a new analysis of blood samples from a 42-patient trial, six independently built AI aging clocks all predicted that treated patients' protein patterns looked biologically younger than the placebo group's, with effects of up to six years. The strongest effect appeared at week four in patients taking 30 mg twice daily, a dose different from the one that most improved lung function, suggesting the aging-clock changes were partly separate from lung improvement. Researchers also compared patients' proteins against more than 55,000 UK Biobank profiles and reported that rentosertib reversed typical age-related changes. Experts described the results as encouraging but cautioned that the small sample size and lack of a trial in healthy people limit the findings, while noting this is the first study to clearly show predicted biological age can be reduced. Insilico identified the target protein TNIK and designed the molecule using two AI systems, and rentosertib is now in a Phase III trial for IPF, with the company reporting at least 28 AI-developed drug candidates as of March 2026.
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