Insilico Medicine, a clinical-stage biotech company based in Abu Dhabi's Masdar City, has used its end-to-end AI drug discovery platform, Pharma.AI, to design a new treatment for acute and chronic pain that outperformed morphine in preclinical models. The candidate, named ISM9528, is a non-opioid compound, meaning it aims to relieve pain without the addiction risks associated with opioid drugs like morphine. Pharma.AI, launched in 2020, uses an AI-driven approach across the entire drug discovery pipeline: identifying the biological mechanisms behind a disease, selecting a therapeutic target, and designing candidate molecules for testing. Alex Aliper, President and co-founder of Insilico Medicine, said seeing a non-opioid candidate outperform morphine in preclinical models was "unprecedented," adding that a safe, non-addictive way to treat pain would be "a game changer" for the field. ISM9528 has now completed preclinical testing and is awaiting progression into human clinical trials. Notably, Insilico Medicine's AI-driven process typically takes just 12 to 18 months to nominate a preclinical drug candidate, compared with roughly five years using traditional methods at large pharmaceutical companies. The company aims to nominate one new drug candidate per month, far outpacing the four or five candidates per year typically produced by major traditional pharma firms. The development underscores Abu Dhabi's growing role as a regional hub for AI-driven pharmaceutical innovation, with Masdar City increasingly attracting biotech ventures applying machine learning to speed up and cut the cost of early-stage drug discovery.