AI-designed drug rentosertib improves lung function in early fibrosis trial.
A new drug designed with help from artificial intelligence may be showing early signs that it could help people with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, or IPF. The drug, called rentosertib, was tested in a 12-week study involving 71 patients. Those who took a higher daily dose saw their lung function improve, while side effects remained mostly mild or manageable. The drug still has a long way to go before it might be approved, but the early results are drawing attention because this medication wasn’t found using traditional methods—it was an AI-developed drug.
IPF is a rare but serious condition. It causes scarring in the lungs, which makes it harder to breathe over time. People who have it often live only a few years after diagnosis. Current treatments only slow the disease down and don’t stop it completely. That’s why any new option is important, especially if it can be found and tested faster than usual. Normally, it takes more than a decade and billions of dollars to bring a new drug to market. The use of could speed that up, saving both time and money.
Rentosertib works by targeting a protein in the body that has been linked to inflammation and scarring. The idea is that by blocking this protein, the drug may reduce the damage happening in the lungs. In this recent trial, patients received different doses of the drug or a placebo. The highest dose—60 milligrams taken once a day—seemed to give the most benefit. On average, patients taking that dose gained nearly 100 milliliters in lung capacity. For people not taking any other medications, the gains were even bigger.
Side effects are always a concern. Some patients did stop the treatment early, mostly because of liver issues or stomach problems like diarrhea. But serious side effects were rare, and those who had to stop still took part in the safety checks. Patients on the AI-developed drug did report more side effects than those on placebo, but the overall pattern wasn’t alarming to researchers. A few patients taking the higher dose were hospitalized for worsening symptoms, which is something that will need to be watched closely in future studies.
Even though the results are promising, they come with limits. The trial only lasted 12 weeks and included a small group of patients, all from the same country. Longer studies with a more diverse group of people will be needed to really know how well rentosertib works and whether it’s safe to take for a longer time. The next steps will likely involve bigger studies that run for many months, tracking both lung health and long-term side effects.
The fact that this is an AI-developed drug makes the story even more interesting. Instead of testing thousands of random chemicals over years, the team behind rentosertib used advanced algorithms to predict which ones might work. The same approach also helped them find the protein target in the first place. This shows how AI might soon become a regular part of drug research—not just speeding up the process but possibly leading scientists in directions they might not have taken otherwise.
For now, rentosertib remains in testing, and there’s no guarantee that it will ever be approved or widely available. But the early signals are enough to encourage further research. If future studies confirm its benefits, rentosertib could one day offer new hope to people with IPF. Until then, the trial stands as an early example of what can happen when science and technology come together to take on a tough disease.
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AI-designed drug shows early promise for lung fibrosis patients in clinical
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