Aqemia is a French deep tech company that develops an innovative drug discovery platform. Their goal is to transform the pharmaceutical industry by utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) to create medicines more effectively and efficiently. Founded by quantum physics researcher Maximilien Levesque and former Boston Consulting Group consultant Emmanuelle Martiano in 2019, the company has. Their goal is to develop a group of new molecules that selectively kill cancers of the head, neck and chest (including lung cancer).
With its London hub, which opened in January, Aqemia aims to reinforce its research capabilities, one of the cornerstones of its strategy. The company’s vice president of translational sciences, Dr. Véronique Birault, emphasized Aqemia’s commitment to “develop medicine faster in a frugal and accurate way.” This strategy is intended to speed up the drug development pipeline. At the same time, it aims to reduce costs of doing business the old way.
Aqemia uses cutting-edge AI technologies to give scientists superpowers. This enables them to quickly analyze huge datasets and find connections within that may identify the most promising drug candidates. The company’s AI models help researchers prioritize which molecules to pursue based on their relationship to certain diseases. This kind of predictive power is desperately needed for the development of targeted therapies that help patients live longer and better lives.
Maximilien Levesque explained the significance of their mathematical approach, stating, “It’s as if, rather than swallowing lists of numbers, you had a maths teacher teaching you how to count.” This analogy highlights the sophistication of Aqemia’s AI models, which leverage a unique mathematical equation solved by Levesque to identify “better molecules” that are “more effective.”
Since its founding, Aqemia has collaborated with ten of the top fifteen pharmaceutical companies. Since 2021, it has entered into more than 130 agreements centered around AI partnerships. This project network is a strong endorsement of Aqemia’s disruptive approach. It ensconces the company as a leader in AI-driven drug discovery.
Looking to the future, the company expects to bring clinical trials on new molecules starting in late 2026 or early 2027. Now, internal programs are demonstrating highly promising results, with reports of tumor efficacy and non-toxicity on cancerous mice models. These initial wins support Aqemia’s mission of fundamentally changing the way drugs are discovered and developed.
Aqemia joins a wave of companies using AI to make drug discovery faster and more efficient. The need to develop treatments that work better and more quickly has never been greater. Advanced technologies such as AI are set for a starring role in this transformation.
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