San Francisco based Verge Genomics, the Neuroscience based drug discovery company launched in 2015, has raised $32 million in early venture capital financing to bring its AI-generated compounds against Parkinson’s disease and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) to clinics within the next three years.

This company has worked in developing its exclusive genomic datasets derived from brain tissue samples of patients who died due to neurodegenerative diseases. Out of 22 novel targets against ALS, a dozen compounds were selected that have shown promising initial data.

Alice Zhang, the co-founder and CEO of Verge Genomics said, “It’s hard to do drug development on your own; But I think the nice thing about this most recent round of $32 million is that it allows us to focus on our internal development—and not need to necessarily rely on pharmaceutical companies to generate revenue—and to develop our own most promising candidates; it also gives us space to pursue partnerships when they can help give us multiple shots on goal, or to continue to validate the platform.”

Alice Zhang further reported, “Our belief is that the most promising applications of AI will come from owning multiple parts of the value chain, and integrating cross-disciplinary teams that break down the silos between biology and computation; Generating your own proprietary data, and focusing on developing your own drug products, is the best way of incentivizing the company to develop the right methods and the right algorithms. I do think there's a scientific and technological renaissance happening in this field, and this is a better moment than any to make real breakthroughs.”