Model Medicines Named to “Fierce 15” List for Transformative AI Drug Discovery Platform

La Jolla, CA – June 10, 2025 — Model Medicines, a leading generative AI biotech platform, today announced its selection to Fierce Medtech’s prestigious “Fierce 15” list for 2025. The annual recognition honors the most innovative private companies in healthcare, those, as Fierce’s Senior Editor, Connor Hale puts it, “aiming to deliver what tomorrow’s patients are waiting for.”

“The companies that make up this class of the Fierce 15 exemplify the idea of moving the field forward by using innovation,” said Hale. Model Medicines now joins an elite group of past Fierce 15 honorees, including Recursion Pharmaceuticals (2017), Insilico Medicine (2019), and Genesis Therapeutics (2023), companies that have redefined how artificial intelligence can reshape the therapeutic pipeline. Other notable past Fierce 15 honorees also include Vir Biotechnology (2017), Valo Health (2021), Generate Biomedicines (2022), Verge Genomics (2022), BigHat Biosciences (2024), and XtalPi (2021).

“This recognition validates the vision and execution of our team in building a truly end-to-end AI drug discovery engine,” said Dr. Daniel Haders, CEO of Model Medicines. “Where traditional approaches chase one disease at a time, our AI platform targets molecular choke points shared across diseases and indications. By focusing on functionally central proteins that drive multiple diseases, we can create therapies that simultaneously treat a range of serious conditions, including viral, oncologic, and inflammatory."

Model Medicines’ proprietary GALILEO™ platform recently explored a virtual chemical space of 53 trillion compounds, down-selected them to a dozen, and synthesized all 12, each of which demonstrated antiviral activity at therapeutically relevant levels in vitro. This 100% hit rate, achieved through a single-shot generative AI approach, underscores the platform’s ability to collapse timelines and increase precision at scale. The platform also includes AmesNet, a best-in-class ADMET modeling engine for mutagenicity prediction that delivers state-of-the-art performance in sensitivity and out-of-domain generalization, outperforming all major QSAR benchmarks. By identifying genotoxic liabilities earlier and more accurately, AmesNet enhances candidate quality and further derisks the path from compound generation to clinic.

Model’s first lead asset, MDL-001, exemplifies this strategy. It targets a previously unrecognized broad-spectrum viral polymerase subdomain, RdRp Thumb-1, and demonstrates preclinical efficacy across a wide range of RNA viruses—including SARS-CoV-2 and VOCs, influenza, norovirus, and HCV. The same platform is being applied across oncology and inflammation.

“Recognition by Fierce Medtech places us among visionary peers who’ve each pushed the boundaries of AI drug discovery,” added Dr. Haders. “We’re proud to be part of this movement toward precision platforms that don’t just accelerate drug discovery, but reinvent it.” 

Several of Model’s advanced preclinical programs, including MDL-001 and next-generation antiviral NCEs, are available for partnership and licensing.  

About Model Medicines

Model Medicines is an AI-native biotech company building life-saving drugs from first principles. Its proprietary GALILEO™ platform integrates generative chemistry, multimodal modeling, and novel target discovery to create best-in-class therapeutics across diseases with high unmet need. With a focus on highly conserved, disease-driving targets, the company’s GALILEO™ platform has generated 192 compounds and advanced 67 into disease models across virology, oncology, inflammation, and rare conditions. Model Medicines is redefining the boundaries of drug discovery. Learn more at www.modelmedicines.com.