India has taken a major step toward leadership in high-value pharmaceutical innovation. Researchers at the Institute of Chemical Technology (ICT), Mumbai, in partnership with OCSR.ai, have designed a new set of anti-inflammatory drug candidates using an entirely AI-driven process.
At the heart of this breakthrough is OCSR.ai, a chemical intelligence engine featuring the world's largest database of 1.3 trillion commercially accessible small molecules, discovering novel compounds that reduce preclinical development by 85%. This platform produced a new family of drug candidates for chronic inflammation, a condition involved in 3 in 5 disease deaths globally.
The project demonstrates how India's fast-maturing deep-tech ecosystem can shift the global pharmaceutical value chain away from slow, trial-and-error methods towards delivering 10x more validated candidates at 1/5th the cost of traditional approaches. Prof. Prashant S. Kharkar, who led the project at ICT, says, "This is only the beginning...the model used here can be applied across therapeutic areas, redefining timelines and costs across the sector."
Key outcomes highlighted by the team:
- AI-driven design of next-generation anti-inflammatory drug candidates
- Candidate discovery cycle reduced from 3 years to 3 weeks.
- A patent-clean space of molecules identified for further development
- Strong potential for safer therapies addressing a $90 billion global market
"This achievement reflects the power of academic–industry collaboration in shaping the future of pharmaceutical innovation," said Prof. Aniruddha B. Pandit, Vice Chancellor at ICT. "It underscores India's capability to lead in intelligent drug design with solutions of global relevance." OCSR.ai's designed candidates could potentially open new pipelines for India's pharmaceutical sector and build the future of fast, safe, and globally competitive drug innovation.
Scientific details are available in the research preprint:
https://chemrxiv.org/engage/chemrxiv/article-details/68ff5dafef936fb4a299a3e1
