insitro to Acquire CombinAbleAI, Launches TherML Platform to Unify AI-Driven Therapeutic Design Across Modalities

Summary

insitro announced it will acquire CombinAbleAI and, alongside the deal, has launched TherML (Therapeutic Machine Learning), a platform it describes as a single, modality-agnostic AI engine for drug discovery and design. The deal is expected to close in late January 2026 and is intended to expand insitro’s capabilities beyond its existing small-molecule and oligonucleotide work into antibodies and other complex biologics, creating an end-to-end system that spans target discovery through developability assessment. The company said TherML is designed to let biology guide both modality selection and molecular design, aiming to generate clinic-ready assets faster while reducing late-stage risk. The combined platform is positioned to move developability considerations—such as stability and manufacturability—earlier in the design process rather than optimizing potency first and assessing manufacturability later. For complex biologics, including multi-specific antibodies and T-cell engagers, TherML will incorporate CombinAbleAI’s physics-informed optimization engine, which insitro said has been pre-trained on more than 100,000 molecular dynamics surrogates to help predict protein structure and flexibility. For small molecules, insitro said TherML leverages its Quantitative Adaptive Libraries to map chemical space and generate local training data, while for oligonucleotides it applies AI and automation to industrialize siRNA candidate design across targets. The platform also includes machine learning models for ADMET prediction, built on insitro’s internal datasets and industry collaboration data, to optimize drug-likeness and safety alongside binding performance. insitro said TherML is integrated with its automated laboratory infrastructure to rapidly generate experimental data and continuously improve model performance based on target- and modality-specific constraints. Following the acquisition, CombinAbleAI’s team will continue operating in Israel as a new insitro R&D center focused on large-molecule design. CombinAbleAI was created and incubated within AION Labs, an Israeli venture studio formed with participation from Merck KGaA, AstraZeneca, Pfizer, Teva, Amazon Web Services, the Israel Biotech Fund, Amiti Ventures, and the Israel Innovation Authority. KEY QUOTES: “Drug discovery has traditionally optimized molecules for potency before assessing developabilit…