InVirtuoLabs partners with Helsinn to discover novel small-molecule therapeutics

InVirtuoLabs, a startup specialising in AI-driven drug discovery, has just announced a major strategic collaboration with Helsinn, a global pharmaceutical group focused on supporting patients with cancer and chronic diseases.

Founded in Lugano in 2024, InVirtuoLabs is transforming drug discovery through its AI-powered generative chemistry platform, InVirtuoGEN. Within the framework of this collaboration, the startup will leverage its cutting-edge technology to optimise and prioritise novel drug candidates from the Helsinn’s proprietary library of compounds with confirmed biological activity. The goal is to accelerate hit-to-lead progression and identify optimised small molecules suitable for further preclinical development.

Gabriele Edoardo Braglia, Chief Business Officer and Deputy CEO of Helsinn, highlighted the significance of the partnership:

“This collaboration with InVirtuoLabs represents an important step in Helsinn’s commitment to accelerating innovation through cutting-edge technologies. By combining our long-established pharmaceutical expertise with next-generation AI-driven drug discovery, we are opening new avenues to deliver meaningful therapeutic solutions to patients worldwide.”

Gianvito Grasso, Founder and CEO of InVirtuoLabs, added: 

“For a young startup like InVirtuoLabs, an R&D agreement with a pharma company is rather rare. We hope to leverage this opportunity to showcase our technological superiority and our state-of-the-art foundational model in generative chemistry. This agreement is a testament to the trust and vision of Helsinn to innovate through AI-based drug discovery.”

Since its incorporation, InVirtuoLabs, currently incubated at USI Startup Centre, has already reached several important milestones: winning the Boldbrain Startup Challenge 2024, closing a €2.85m pre-seed funding round in 2025 and launching InVirtuoGEN, a new foundational model that outperformed other models, including the one of NVIDIA, on all benchmarks. Among the team’s latest achievements is also a €2.3 million Eurostars research grant secured with partners from Italy, Spain, and Greece. The project aims to identify and experimentally validate 3–5 lead small molecules for a rare neurodegenerative movement disorder.