10–15
Years to reach patients
Bringing a new medicine from an idea to approval commonly takes this long.
VirtBio
Virtual cells for accelerated bioscience.
From years in the lab to minutes on a computer.
What is a virtual cell?
A virtual cell is a computer model of a living cell. Test a gene change or a drug on it, and it predicts how the real cell would respond.
- 1Test a gene change or a drug on the virtual cell.
- 2Predict how the real cell would respond, in minutes.
- 3Decide which ideas are worth taking to the lab.
Months in the lab or minutes with a virtual cell.
A lab experiment means planning, ordering, growing cells, running the test and analysing the result. A virtual cell runs the same test on a computer in minutes.
What happens to the cell if Gene Y changes?
Wet lab
Virtual cell
Click to see the difference
Wet lab
Virtual cell
Speed
Weeks to months per experiment
Minutes per question
Scale
A limited number of experiments at a time
Millions of changes, tested in silico
Cost
Materials, equipment and staff for every test
Compute
Role
Confirms what is true in real cells
Points to what is worth testing
Why it matters.
Patients can't wait a decade for a medicine that may fail. Virtual cells help us find what works fast.
90%
Fail in clinical trials
Roughly nine in ten drug candidates that enter clinical trials never reach approval.
Sun et al., Acta Pharmaceutica Sinica B, 2022
Better odds
More medicines that work, sooner
Better predictions before the lab mean more drugs that work, and new medicines that reach patients sooner.
A faster path to a cure for every disease.
Our goal is to take drug discovery from years in the lab to minutes on a computer.