Insilico paper says AI-designed fibrosis drug cut biological age readings within four weeks

Insilico Medicine said in a paper published Sept. 7 in Nature Biotechnology that its drug candidate rentosertib reduced biological age readings across six independent proteomic aging clocks in blood samples from 42 patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. The strongest signal appeared in the 30 mg twice-daily group, where biological age was reported to move back by about three to four years at week four, with one clock showing a six-year reversal. The study framed the analysis as the first time multiple proteomic aging clocks had been compared within a clinical drug intervention trial. Founder Alex Zhavoronkov called it the most important paper of his career so far and said the work was first presented on Sept. 8 at a Nature conference at Sorbonne University in Paris. The paper also sets clear limits on what can be concluded. The 42-patient dataset was an exploratory subset of a 71-patient phase 2a trial, and the authors said the study cannot yet separate slower aging from the possibility that the blood-based changes simply reflect improved lung disease. The company’s earlier Nature Medicine paper highlighted a different result: the clearest lung-function gain came from the 60 mg once-daily group, not the 30 mg twice-daily group that showed the largest aging-clock change.