TherML™ integrates CombinAbleAI's advanced next-generation biologics expertise with insitro's existing small molecule and oligonucleotide capabilities, unifying treatment design across all major drug modalities in a single AI engine.
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – (BUSINESS WIRE) – insitro, a causal biology-based AI therapeutics company, today announced the acquisition of CombinAbleAI and the launch of insitro’s TherML™ (Therapeutic Machine Learning) Platform. The acquisition is expected to close in late January 2026 and will complete in vitro full-stack, modality-independent capabilities with precision across small molecules, oligonucleotides, antibodies, and other complex biologics, enabling biology to guide both modality selection and molecular design from target discovery to developability assessment. This integrated approach accelerates the generation of clinically usable assets while reducing late-stage development risk.
“Drug discovery has traditionally optimized the potency of molecules before assessing their developability, but we often find that very strong candidates face manufacturing constraints,” said Philippe Tagari, chief scientific officer at insitro. “By integrating CombinAbleAI's physics-based, AI-driven design for complex biological treatments with our causal biology platform, we treat efficacy and manufacturability as interdependent design criteria from the start. This fundamentally changes the translation of biological insights into viable treatments. Rather than optimizing sequentially and hoping for coincidences, we are designing for both simultaneously.”
“Along with our colleagues in the United States, Poland, and Malaysia, we are pleased to welcome the CombinAbleAI team in Israel to the IncitroSite family,” added Dr. Daphne Kohler, Founder and CEO of Incitro. “Their addition will help launch our integrated TherML platform, which is a critical part of our end-to-end industrialized AI-enabled system built for reproducible, scalable, and predictable drug discovery.”
TherML supports AI-driven design and optimization of multiple therapies within a single platform. For complex biologics such as multispecific antibodies and T-cell engagers, the platform leverages CombinAbleAI's physics-based, AI-driven optimization engine. The engine is pre-trained with over 100,000 molecular dynamics surrogates to predict protein structure and flexibility with high fidelity. For small molecules, insitro's proprietary quantitative adaptive library densely maps chemical space and generates high-resolution local training data. For oligonucleotides, this platform employs AI and large-scale automation to industrialize siRNA candidate design and optimize sequence selection and target knockdown across diverse therapeutic targets. Powered by advanced machine learning models for predicting ADMET properties, developed through Insitro's internal data and data from industry collaborations, TherML optimizes binding affinity as well as drug-likeness and safety profile.
TherML optimizes drug-like properties early in the workflow, reducing late-stage attrition and balancing efficacy and developability. The platform is directly integrated with insitro's automated labs to continuously improve predictive performance and enable rapid generation of experimental data that adapts to the specific constraints of each target and modality.
“Effective treatment design requires optimization across affinity, selectivity, stability, and manufacturability,” said Dr. Noam Katz, co-founder of CombinAbleAI. “We are very excited to join insitro and integrate CombinAbleAI's physics-based AI modeling into insitro's end-to-end discovery platform to reliably and quickly transform high-value targets into molecules that perform as intended in the real world.”
CombinAbleAI was created and incubated within AION Labs, a first-of-its-kind Israeli biotech venture studio that works closely with global pharmaceutical leaders to build AI-native drug discovery companies. AION Labs was founded by Merck KGaA, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Teva, Amazon Web Services, and the Israel Biotechnology Fund together with strategic partner Amiti Ventures, with support from the Israel Innovation Authority as part of the bioconvergence agenda.
The CombinAbleAI team will continue to operate in Israel as a new indoor R&D center focused on advances in polymer design.
About Incitro
insitro is an AI therapeutics company built on causal biology. insitro's platform aims to uncover how diseases begin, progress, and can be resolved by generating an integrated, multimodal corpus of human and cellular data and analyzing it with machine learning. With programs focused on metabolic diseases and neuroscience, the company applies this approach to identifying genetic drivers, prioritizing targets, and designing medicines to fundamentally treat diseases. insitro is backed by world-class investors and has raised approximately $800 million in funding, including approximately $150 million from non-dilutive pharmaceutical partnerships.
About CombinAbleAI
CombinAbleAI is an AI-powered biotechnology company. in silico A platform for designing and optimizing therapeutic antibodies. Founded in 2023 by Dr. Daria Kokh and Dr. Noam Katz of AION Labs Venture Studio, based in Rehovot, Israel, the company applies advanced machine learning and computational molecular simulation to accelerate antibody discovery and engineering. CombinAbleAI aims to reduce trial and error, shorten development timelines, and improve the quality of drug candidates moving toward the clinic by enabling multiparameter optimization across key characteristics of developability and efficacy.
About AION Labs
AION Labs is a first-of-its-kind venture studio founded by a coalition of pharmaceutical giants (Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Teva, Merck), tech giants (AWS), IBF, Imiti, and the Israel Innovation Authority to develop and integrate AI and computational technologies that redefine drug discovery and development. Its unique model enables the formation of fully supported biotech startups that can fast-track their path to market with funding and real-time guidance from global pharmaceutical R&D partners.
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