Industrialization Breakthrough: AI Peptide Drugs Advance from the Laboratory to Clinical Trials
In recent years, with the continuous iteration of AI algorithms and industry-university-research collaborative innovation, new peptide drugs guided by artificial intelligence have ushered in a period of industrialization explosion. Many projects around the world have entered the clinical stage, verifying the feasibility and practicality of AI peptide research and development technology. Among them, Chinese enterprises have performed particularly well and become a core force in global AI peptide innovation.
1. Milestone Event: The World’s First AI-Designed Peptide Drug Enters Clinical Trials
KYS2301 Gel (CCR8 peptide inhibitor), developed by Kanion Pharmaceutical and Shengpu Zetai, is the world’s first peptide drug fully designed by AI and entering clinical trials for the treatment of atopic dermatitis, and also the world’s first-in-class CCR8 peptide inhibitor. During the research and development of this drug, AI technology broke through the industry challenge of transdermal absorption of peptides with molecular weight > 2000 Da. It took only 4 months from molecular design to PCC determination, and 18 months from PCC to IND application, shortening the traditional R&D cycle by more than 60%. This marks that AI peptide R&D has moved from concept to clinical verification, opening a new model of peptide drug development.
2. Comprehensive Breakthroughs in Hot Fields, Covering Various Clinical Needs
2.1 Metabolic Diseases
In addition to ultra-long-acting GLP-1 agonists, XtalPi’s PepiX™ platform helps Gan&Lee Pharmaceuticals develop new metabolic peptides, obtaining high-activity candidates at nanomolar level in just a few months, which is expected to solve the therapeutic pain points of diabetes and obesity. Relying on the AI peptide platform, Sunno Health promotes the clinical transformation of core pipelines such as STC007 (postoperative analgesia/CKD-aP) and STC009 (SHPT treatment), accelerating the implementation of metabolism-related peptide drugs.
2.2 Antibacterial / Antiviral Fields
Facing the crisis of drug-resistant bacteria, AI-designed broad-spectrum antimicrobial peptides have become an important breakthrough. Such peptides exert effects by destroying bacterial cell membranes, are not easy to develop drug resistance, and have better efficacy than clinical antibiotics in animal experiments. Meanwhile, AI technology has also successfully excavated evolutionarily distant antiviral peptides against influenza, COVID-19 and other viruses, which can effectively block virus invasion with high activity and low cytotoxicity, providing a new idea for anti-infective treatment.
2.3 Antitumor and Immunomodulatory Fields
AI-designed cyclic peptide / macrocyclic peptide inhibitors targeting PD-L1, CCR8 and TREM2 have the advantages of high affinity, strong stability and low immunogenicity, and some projects have entered the preclinical stage. In addition, AI technology also plays an important role in the research and development of peptide-drug conjugates (PDCs). Through precise design of peptide carriers and linkers, targeted drug delivery is realized, side effects are reduced, and antitumor efficacy is improved.
2.4 Analgesia and Wound Repair Fields
Based on the AI-driven natural peptide library, Peide Bio develops highly selective peptide inhibitors targeting nAChRs, which is expected to solve the problems of strong addiction of traditional opioids and obvious toxicity of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. This project has received special provincial scientific and technological funds. The AI-designed VEGFR2 agonist peptide VMP3 can strongly promote angiogenesis and accelerate diabetic wound healing, breaking through the bottleneck of poor stability of natural VEGF.
3. The Rise of China: The Emergence of AI Peptide R&D Ecosystem and Moving Towards Global Leadership
China has become the core position of global AI peptide research and development. Relying on industry-university-research collaborative innovation, algorithm and data advantages, and continuous capital inflow, China has built a complete AI peptide innovation ecosystem. Local enterprises and scientific research institutions have risen rapidly, and gradually realized the leap from “follow-up innovation” to “global leadership”.
In terms of enterprise layout, leading enterprises have increased investment in the AI peptide track: XtalPi has built the PepiX™ full-chain peptide platform covering generative design, non-natural amino acid optimization and high-throughput experiments, and in-depth cooperation with giants such as Gan&Lee Pharmaceuticals; as a leading enterprise in AI peptide design, Shengpu Zetai has cooperated with Kanion Pharmaceutical to develop the world’s first AI peptide clinical drug, demonstrating the strength of local technology; with core algorithms such as ComplexDDG, MoleculeMind has reached the world’s leading level in peptide structure design and optimization, and relevant research results have been published in Nature Communications; Sunno Health and Huawei Cloud have joined forces to invest 50 million yuan in building a peptide molecular large model platform, promoting the in-depth integration of AI technology and peptide R&D, and supporting the implementation of a number of clinical pipelines; Metis Therapeutics focuses on the AI macrocyclic peptide platform, receiving investments from international pharmaceutical companies such as Eli Lilly and AstraZeneca, with a Series B financing of 150 million US dollars, highlighting the recognition of global capital for China’s AI peptide innovation.
The core advantages of China’s AI peptide R&D lie in “dry-wet combination” and “compliance adaptation”: the special protein LLM and generative models developed by local teams are adapted to Chinese targets and disease data, and more in line with domestic clinical needs; AI design is integrated with automated synthesis and high-throughput screening to achieve a closed loop of rapid iteration and verification; at the same time, AI-designed data is traceable and interpretable, fully meeting the declaration requirements of global regulatory agencies such as NMPA, FDA and EMA, laying a foundation for domestic peptide drugs to go global.
4. Future Trends: AI Empowers Peptide Drugs to Usher in a New Era of “On-Demand Customization”
With the continuous iteration of AI technology and the rapid development of the peptide industry, in the next 3–5 years, AI-guided new peptide drug R&D will present four cutting-edge trends, further promoting industry reform.
First, multimodal large model fusion. Peptide sequence, structure, function, literature and clinical data will be jointly trained to build an end-to-end intelligent R&D model, realize one-stop design from target to clinical candidate molecules, and further improve prediction accuracy and generation capacity.
Second, the wide application of non-natural amino acids and complex modifications. AI models will integrate more than 2,000 non-natural amino acids to design “super peptides” with high stability, high activity, oral/transdermal availability, break through the limitations of natural peptides, and expand the application scenarios of peptide drugs.Third, cyclic peptides / macrocyclic peptides enter a golden age. AI diffusion models will efficiently design various cyclic peptide molecules, whose affinity is close to antibodies and druggability is better, and will become the research focus in the fields of antitumor and anti-infection.Fourth, the landing of AI + automated “lights-out factories”. Realize the whole-process unmanned “AI design—robot synthesis—automatic screening—AI re-optimization”, screen thousands of peptides per day, advance multiple R&D pipelines per month, further shorten the R&D cycle and reduce R&D costs.
From “finding a needle in a haystack” to “precision intelligent manufacturing”, artificial intelligence is completely rewriting the rules of peptide drug discovery. It opens up a new peptide chemical space, creates ideal drug molecules that do not exist in nature, and provides a new path for solving global medical problems such as drug resistance, metabolism and tumors.
Today, China’s AI peptide R&D ecosystem has gradually matured. From technological breakthroughs to clinical implementation, from domestic substitution to global output, local enterprises are promoting China’s transformation from a “major peptide industry country” to a “strong AI peptide innovation country” with strong innovative strength. In the future, with the continuous upgrading of AI algorithms and the deepening of industry-university-research collaboration, dozens of AI-designed peptide drugs will enter clinical trials and come to the market, bringing safer, more effective and more accessible new therapies to patients worldwide.