China has granted approval for the country's first Class 1 innovative drug developed using artificial intelligence. The medication, named Mprosevir, received conditional approval from China's National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) for treating adults with mild to moderate COVID-19, reports infohub.kz.

The development was a joint effort between Westlake University, Westlake Laboratory, and the pharmaceutical company Westlake Pharmaceuticals. Notably, it took only three and a half years from the discovery of a candidate molecule to the completion of clinical trials.

Mprosevir falls into the highest category in China's drug registration system—Class 1. As Xinhua news agency explains, this class includes innovative drugs that have not previously appeared on the market either in China or abroad. They must have a completely new chemical structure, a new mechanism of action, and clear clinical value.

This drug is the world's first low-molecular-weight innovative drug approved after development using DNA-encoded library (DEL) technology. The DEL concept was proposed 34 years ago, and only now has it led to an approved drug.

In the search for the future drug, scientists combined artificial intelligence with DEL technology. AI was used for virtual screening to filter out false positives and identify compounds with real potential. The DEL library used contained 49 billion compounds. In the initial stage, the technology identified more than 100 promising candidates.

With traditional approaches, testing such a number of molecules would require enormous resources. However, the AI model reduced the list to nine candidates in just a few days. Subsequent tests showed that six of the nine molecules exhibited high activity, confirming the accuracy of the preliminary selection.

After evaluating toxicity, metabolism, and other characteristics, the developers settled on the molecule WLU6937. Over the next two years, the team optimized the chosen molecule, enhancing its efficacy and reducing toxicity. The work progressed from experiments on cells and mice to clinical trials, with artificial intelligence continuing to play a key role at all stages.

According to the developers, the success of Mprosevir demonstrates that using AI in drug creation has become effective and practically feasible.