04.06.2025.
Whether it’s aggressive cancers or rare genetic disorders, the need for faster, smarter drug development continues to grow. And yes, it is becoming increasingly urgent. Diseases evolve, and patient needs are moving ahead of what traditional research timelines can deliver. This gap is creating space for a new generation of pharmatech.
France’s Aqemia, based in Paris and London, is working to change how drug discovery begins. By combining quantum physics with generative AI, Aqemia aims to design treatments for complex diseases with greater speed and precision than conventional methods allow.
Dr. Maximilien Levesque, CEO and co-founder of Aqemia:
“We aim to make drug discovery truly innovative: creating molecules that don’t yet exist to reach harder targets, neglected diseases, and complex biology with unprecedented precision.”
Born as a deep tech spin-off from École Normale Supérieure, Aqemia has quickly evolved into one of Europe’s fastest-scaling drug discovery engines. Its focus? Rapidly designing innovative drug candidates for a wide range of critical diseases.
In a major step forward, the company recently announced it’s expanding its platform to target RNA – a complex and long-considered “undruggable” frontier. By fusing generative AI with quantum-inspired physics, Aqemia is pushing drug discovery into new territory, accelerating the pace at which new treatments can be designed and tested.
At the close of last year, Aqemia marked two significant milestones: $100 million in cumulative funding and the launch of its global expansion, beginning with a new base in London.
While traditional drug development takes a decade or more and billions in funding, Aqemia’s physics-first approach aims to generate promising new molecules much faster, perhaps even in a matter of weeks. The difference lies in its core technology: proprietary algorithms grounded in quantum and statistical mechanics that power a generative AI engine capable of designing molecules from scratch.
How does it work? Instead of training the AI on existing lab data, Aqemia’s team feeds it the underlying rules of nature – how atoms and molecules interact in the context of disease. It’s a radically different approach that opens doors to discovering treatments we couldn’t previously reach.
Backed by significant French government funding and strategic partnerships with leading pharmaceutical players, Aqemia is building fast and thinking big.
So how exactly does it work? Why does RNA matter so much right now? And could patients see results in our lifetime?
Healthy.mt asked questions to Dr. Maximilien Levesque, CEO and co-founder of Aqemia, to get an insight into how they’re reshaping the science and strategy of drug discovery.
You’re now using AI to design medicines that target RNA — something scientists have struggled with for years. Can you explain in simple terms what this means and why it could change the way we treat diseases like cancer?
You’re right, RNAs have long been a promising yet difficult class of therapeutic targets, due to their inherently flexible and complex structures. However, their pivotal role in gene regulation and expression, especially in diseases like cancer, makes them highly strategic for innovative drug discovery efforts.
Targeting RNA is like going one step closer to the root of a disease.
Instead of just blocking potentially cancer-driving proteins that have already been produced by cells, we intervene earlier, at the level of the RNA instructions that tell cells which proteins to make. This has been seen as a major challenge for years. But thanks to our physics-based generative AI, we can now imagine designing drug candidates that bind specifically to RNA targets, something that used to be out of reach. This opens the door to whole new classes of disease mechanisms, especially in cancer, that were previously considered undruggable.
Your technology doesn’t rely on traditional lab data to design new drug candidates. How does that work — and how could it make new medicines available faster for patients?
At Aqemia, we pioneer a physics-first approach to drug discovery, eliminating the need to train on experimental data and enabling generative AI to design truly novel molecules. We’re the only ones combining deep physics and AI to reconcile speed WITH precision in molecule design — and to do so at scale.
Thanks to this unique combination, we can simulate how drug molecules behave in the computer without needing lab data to begin with. This allows us to explore millions of potential compounds quickly and generate original drug candidates in just weeks.
Once we’ve identified the most promising candidates, we validate them experimentally through a network of CROs. We remain deeply humble in the face of biology and experimental reality: our computer-based predictions are only the starting point.
And because we’re not constrained by past lab data, we can design molecules that don’t yet exist — potential solutions to diseases we still struggle to treat.
What makes RNA such an important target in drug discovery right now? And how could patients benefit from treatments that work at this deeper level of gene regulation?
RNA sits at the intersection between our genetic code and the proteins that drive disease. If we can modulate RNA, we can intervene earlier and more precisely in disease processes — even before faulty proteins are produced. This opens the door to treating conditions that are hard to reach with conventional drugs.
For patients, that means access to new therapies, potentially addressing unmet medical needs, and more effective treatments tailored to the root causes of complex diseases like cancer and genetic disorders.
You’ve just received major funding from the French government to push this work further. What’s your vision — where could this take us in 5 to 10 years when it comes to treating diseases more effectively?
This funding enables us to extend the reach of our technology to previously unexplored targets, opening the door to new classes of treatments. Integrating RNA targeting into our platform reinforces our ambition to transform the invention of new therapeutic solutions for patients. We are grateful for the continued support that allows us to push boundaries and tackle critical medical challenges.
In 5 to 10 years, our vision is that many diseases currently seen as untreatable will have new therapeutic options.
This could profoundly transform the lives of patients facing conditions we don’t yet know how to treat, or treat effectively. We aim to make drug discovery truly innovative: creating molecules that don’t yet exist to reach harder targets, neglected diseases, and complex biology with unprecedented precision.
That’s what this investment is about — building the future of medicine, from deep science to real-world impact.
PHOTO: AQEMIA FOUNDERS – Maximilien Levesque (CEO) and Emmanuelle Martiano (COO)
