STAT+: Verge Labs’ new AI model solves patient stratification problems for neurology clinical trials

As the saying goes, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. Or as Verge Labs might put it, one company’s failed clinical trial … is that same company’s new AI benchmarking dataset. Over a decade ago, Alice Zhang co-founded Verge Genomics with the idea that by looking at the network of genes causing neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s, ALS, or Alzheimer’s, the company would be able to come up with better drugs. The company did target discovery work, for example, coming up with two targets that Eli Lilly nominated to its internal pipeline in 2024. Verge also had its own pipeline, where it was pursuing an ALS drug — that is, until its Phase 1b trial failed last month. The company published a postmortem explaining what exactly went wrong with the trial, in which a third of the patients dropped out because they could not tolerate the drug. “While the temptation is strong, when a trial doesn’t meet the anticipated end points, to kind of look away and not talk about it, we think there are a lot of learnings that can come — not just for us, but for the field and for ALS broadly — that’s really important to share. That’s not done very often,” Zhang told STAT in an interview. Continue to STAT+ to read the full story…