Have research or science problems that need to be addressed by AI? Have excellent programming skills that you want to show off? Have innovative ideas that you want to share with like-minded people? DeepVerse, together with Bota Bio, Chemical.AI, Foreseen and Nest.Bio, hereby organizes the first nationwide AI4Science Hackathon for researchers and students, providing a cross-disciplinary platform to foster innovations, where you can present your ideas and meet other brilliant minds. Concept Introduction AI4Science (Artificial Intelligence for Science) is an initiative first proposed at Caltech that aims to bring together AI researchers with experts from other disciplines to push modern AI tools into every area of science and engineering.

Chemical.AI recently announced the closing of nearly $15 million Series A+ funding led by Source Code Capital, with participation from Sequoia China, FreesFund and Hofon Capital, to support the construction and improvement of automated synthesis platform and new marketing penetration. Previously, the company had completed an angel round of funding in 2019 from FreesFund, and the Series A financing led by Sequoia China Seed Fund and followed by Nest.Bio Ventures and FreesFund in early 2021. Chemical.AI, an R&D technology company empowering chemistry with AI that avails artificial intelligence technology, big data and machine learning to develop toolkit that dramatically improves the efficiency of chemical research, and is committed to building an intelligent planning platform for compounds. The founder and the team of Chemical.AI have been working in the field of cheminformatics for more than ten years, with abundant R&D experience and a large amount of accumulated data in chemical industry, and the founder is a pioneer in AI-driven chemical synthesis industry in China. “Thanks to the early involvement and strong technology accumulation, our team has made very significant progress in intelligent synthesis and has broad development prospects, which is the main reason why we received this round of financing. It will enable us to improve our automated synthesis platform and experimental data collection, and become an AI platform-based company serving synthetic R&D companies, thus helping the whole molecular synthesis industry to advance from the ‘manual era’ to the ‘intelligent stage’.” said Dr.Ning XIA, CEO and founder of Chemical.AI. Although automated equipment is gradually being promoted in the field of chemical synthesis, computer-driven synthesis process is still a big problem, and the seamless integration of hardware, software and data is the core challenge. Professor E.J. Corey identified the rules of retrosynthesis in the 1960s. However, it was not until late 2019 that the US MIT News website issued an article, stating robotic platforms can automatically produce chemical molecules with the help of AI. This demonstrates how difficult it is to achieve automated synthesis. Chemical.AI team has been committed into the chemical synthesis for many years and has made remarkable progress in retrosynthesis. We promote valuable data integration and reaction prediction with self-developed algorithms, and continuously improving the AI automated synthesis platform, which in turn empowers the team's R&D staff. At the same time, we have established long-term partnerships with many large pharmaceutical companies and CRO giants around the world. “Source Code Capital continues to be optimistic about the potential of data science in all aspects of drug R&D. Under the background of industrial division of labor, chemical synthesis has become one of the most standardized aspects of drug discovery and development, which has been initially digitized. Since 2005, there are teams have been trying to tackle these challenges continuously. Until 2018, chemical synthesis algorithm is gradually realized with the support of new AI technology. Chemical.AI team has persisted in this field for more than a decade, accumulating abundant experience in data and algorithms and the platform they provide has been recognized by leading Pharmas and CROs in this field. Next, Chemical.AI will realize the closed loop workflow in chemical synthesis by combining automation and algorithms. We expect Chemical.AI to continue to lead the world in this area and believe it will provide vital infrastructure for a new paradigm of data-driven R&D for small molecule drug in the future.”, said Mr. Runze Chen from Source Code Capital, the lead investor of this round.

In June 2021, Chemical.AI, an R&D technology company empowering chemistry with AI, announced a strategic partnership with Livzon Pharma and Joincare Pharma which are dedicated to discovering and supporting the development of leading pharmaceutical innovation technologies and products in China. The three parties will combine strengths of their own, including Chemical.AI's leading computer-aided retrosynthesis route design system, and the knowledge and experience of process chemistry expertise from Livzon Pharma and Joincare Pharma, to facilitate process chemistry development with retrosynthesis technology. Process chemistry plays a vital role in the middle-to-late stage of drug development until it reaches the market. The route taken by medicinal chemists to synthesize small amounts of compounds is only a starting point. Industrialized and commercialized pharmaceutical process chemistry needs to meet a series of stringent requirements such as green chemistry, production safety, low cost, high feasibility of operation route and clear patent scope, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive for pharmaceutical companies. Retrosynthesis platform (ChemAIRS™) of Chemical.AI has been successfully commercialized after years of development, enhancing the efficiency of R&D in medicinal chemistry actively. Livzon Pharma and Joincare Pharma have abundant expert knowledge and experience in various drug synthesis and process chemistry, which can be applied to support the development of the AI retrosynthesis platform on process chemistry, together with real-life case studies and data. Based on this, the three parties are expected to further empower process chemistry through the AI technology platform to improve the efficiency of industrial output and accelerate drug development. “Artificial intelligence will bring new potential and opportunities for China's pharmaceutical industry.” said Dr. Ning Xia, CEO of Chemical.AI. “By empowering drug development through AI, we can effectively improve efficiency and save costs at all stages of pharmaceutical R&D. We are pleased to join hands with Livzon and Joincare, to avail advantage of their strengths to jointly solve the difficulties and pain points in the process of new drug development and accelerate the application of AI retrosynthesis in the field of process chemistry and win-win cooperation.” Dr. Jianing Liu, CIO of Livzon Pharma, said: “In pharmaceutical R&D, chemical process research is a key step for the transformation of chemical drug molecules from laboratory to market. It is an important task for pharmaceutical companies to determine the potential of any chemical drug molecule in development and the feasibility of large- scale manufacturing. Livzon Pharma and its parent company, Joincare Pharma, are very pleased to develop in-depth cooperation with Chemical.AI to promote the application of AI technology in the development of green, safe and efficient chemical synthesis processes.”