In the past decade, investments in AI-driven drug discovery companies have surpassed $59.3 billion, driven by the prospect of faster development timelines and lower attrition rates across clinical programs. Most of that capital has gone toward large-scale biological modeling, where high-quality public datasets made AI tractable early. Small-molecule discovery, which underlies most drugs on the market, presents a harder computational problem and attracted less capital. But some local companies are tackling this exact challenge through science and technology.
Evogene Ltd. (Nasdaq/TASE: EVGN), founded in 2002 and publicly listed on Nasdaq and Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, has spent years building a computational platform around the convergence of artificial intelligence, computational chemistry, biology, and data science, applied specifically to small molecules, the active compounds that underlie most pharmaceuticals and agricultural products on the market. The company's vision is to transform how novel molecules are discovered and developed, accelerating the creation of solutions for the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries.
Evogene's proprietary generative AI engine, ChemPass AI™, is designed to explore vast chemical space in order to design novel small molecules. While traditional drug discovery relies on iterative cycles of synthesis and testing, ChemPass AI™ applies advanced computational algorithms to optimize multiple molecular characteristics at the discovery stage. Efficacy, selectivity, safety profile, and manufacturability are all addressed in the design phase, before a molecule is ever synthesized in a lab.
Built on a unique multidisciplinary framework, the technology enables the design of novel molecules that are engineered to meet a broad range of product-specific requirements simultaneously. The platform draws on years of experience and proprietary data that Evogene has generated and refined through its own research programs and external collaborations.
The complexity of small molecule discovery
The major design challenge is rooted in the fundamental complexity of the molecules themselves. Small molecules, workhorses of medicine and crop science, are chemically synthesized compounds, small enough to enter cells, that interact with biological targets to produce a therapeutic or agronomic effect. Most drugs and crop protection products on the market belong to this category. The problem is that identifying a candidate molecule and optimizing it across multiple critical parameters before getting it through clinical or regulatory development can take more than a decade and cost over a billion dollars. Despite the intensive process and significant capital it requires, most candidates fail, and the industry has long sought better tools for narrowing the field earlier.
ChemPass AI™ is designed to address this by compressing the optimization cycle, resulting in a more efficient development process, stronger product candidates, and a higher probability of success, at a stage where most programs historically fail. The company’s ongoing technological collaboration with Google Cloud recently incorporated AI agents into the process.
Extending the platform to a pipeline
Evogene’s business model combines internal product development and external collaborations, by leveraging its AI-driven discovery platform to develop novel small molecules for both human health and next-generation crop protection applications.
Resistance to existing herbicides and fungicides has spread broadly across key crops, and the thin pipeline of replacements is creating a pressing need for new chemistry. Regulatory pressure on older chemistries is tightening in parallel, narrowing the window for products developed through conventional means. AI-driven design offers a route to novel active ingredients that meet both biological and regulatory criteria from early in development.
Evogene is strategically building a diversified pipeline of product candidates for both pharmaceutical and ag-chemical markets through multiple collaborations, enabling the company to advance several independent development paths in parallel, diversify risk, and maximize the potential for commercial success. Recent partnerships and collaborations include those with Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Systasy Bioscience GmbH and LMU University Hospital Munich, and others, as they proceed with active programs targeting inflammatory bowel disease, multiple sclerosis, lung cancer, and metabolic disease.
Evogene operates at the intersection of two areas where Israel has built competitive depth. The country’s pharmaceutical and agricultural research sectors have strong institutional roots, with ties to the Weizmann Institute, Hebrew University, and the Technion, and its computational science and AI industries are among the most productive in the world relative to the size of the economy.
For an industry that has historically tolerated high failure rates as a fixed cost of doing business, increasing the probability of successful drug development has a direct value both on human health and on markets. The next few years will show us how the promise of AI-driven molecule design and drug discovery will translate into real impact for the industry: whether we’ll be able to create novel drugs, and how much we’ll be able to accelerate timelines and lower attrition rates compared to pre-AI development. The universal goal is to bring life-saving solutions to patients, sooner. Through ChemPass AI™, Evogene is right at the center of this innovation, and the company’s growing pipeline will cement its place in the next generation of medicine.
Written in collaboration with Evogene