At the 2026 BIO International Convention, SK Biopharmaceuticals and Insilico Medicine announced a research and development collaboration. The two parties will leverage the Pharma.AI platform to discover, design, and optimize novel drug candidates targeting neuroimmune indications. As of press time, Insilico Medicine’s share price had risen by more than 13%.
STAR Market Daily, June 22. Today, the 2026 BIO International Convention officially opened. During the convention, SK Biopharmaceuticals and Insilico Medicine, an AI-driven pharmaceutical company, announced a research and development collaboration to jointly focus on innovative drug candidate molecules in the field of neuroimmune diseases.
SK Biopharmaceuticals is a global biotechnology company under South Korea’s SK Group, which controls SK hynix, and is focused on the research, development, manufacturing, and commercialization of innovative medicines. The company has built deep expertise in the central nervous system disease area, with the antiepileptic drug Cenobamate as a representative achievement.
Li Dongxun added.
According to available data, with the support of its AI-driven drug discovery platform, Insilico Medicine can advance a project from initiation to the preclinical candidate compound nomination stage in an average of 12 to 18 months, far shorter than the 2.5 to 4 years required by traditional drug development. The company has previously established collaborations with global pharmaceutical giants such as Eli Lilly. A June 21 research report by Huafu Securities noted that AI-driven drug development may be entering a validation period, with multiple pipelines in mid-to-late clinical stages. AI-empowered drug R&D is set to undergo industry validation: currently, more than 10 drugs designed with AI assistance worldwide have entered Phase II or later clinical stages, covering oncology, autoimmune diseases, respiratory diseases, weight management, and other fields. Huachuang Securities stated that the AI-driven drug development industry chain has formed a complete division-of-labor system: upstream data and computing power support, midstream AI platform enablement, and downstream pharmaceutical enterprise application deployment. The global AI pharmaceutical market has maintained steady growth. Its market size rose from USD 790 million in 2021 to USD 1.82 billion in 2024, reached USD 2.41 billion in 2025, and is expected to reach USD 2.99 billion by 2026.
