MindRank, an artificial intelligence (AI)-empowered drug discovery company, announces that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared the company's Investigational New Drug (IND) application for MDR-001, an oral small-molecule glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonist (GLP-1 RA), for the treatment of obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM), respectively. MindRank expects to initiate a Phase I safety study in the first quarter of 2023.

Empowered by Mindrank's proprietary AI drug discovery platform, Molecule Pro™, it just took the company 19 months to obtain the IND approval since the MDR-001 program was initiated. With fewer than 100 chemical compounds synthesized and tested, the preclinical candidate was discovered.

"By facilitating novel small molecule drug design with desired drug-like properties, we believe our AI platform can significantly improve the pre-clinical R&D efficiency. The FDA IND approval of MDR-001 is a solid validation for the potential of our AI platform." commented Zhangming Niu, CEO of MindRank. This heralds the transition of MindRank from a discovery-stage to a clinical-stage AI-empowered biotechnology company.