Simulations Plus experienced a significant market reaction when its stock climbed 28% after the company disclosed a technical collaboration with NVIDIA to bring GPU-accelerated simulation and AI-assisted workflows to drug development modeling applications.
The announced effort connects Simulations Plus' established scientific engines - covering physiologically-based pharmacokinetics (PBPK), pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics (PK/PD) and quantitative systems pharmacology (QSP) - with NVIDIA's AI and high-performance computing infrastructure. The stated intent is to accelerate simulation cycles, broaden parameter exploration and streamline virtual population studies used by scientific teams in preclinical and clinical modeling.
NVIDIA's role in the collaboration includes providing advanced computing infrastructure and specialist knowledge in accelerated inference and GPU-native optimization to boost simulation performance and to enable interactive, AI-assisted workflows. The company will also make available elements of its life sciences ecosystem, specifically including the NVIDIA BioNeMo platform and access to a global network of pharmaceutical partners.
The collaboration is built around three technical priorities:
- Developing GPU-optimized simulation capabilities for QSP and PK/PD applications;
- Applying AI-assisted methods to support model construction and parameter fitting; and
- Advancing quantitative systems pharmacology workflows to be more computationally efficient and interactive.
According to testing cited by the companies, current trials of the integrated approach have demonstrated reductions in the time required for end-to-end QSP modeling of up to 75%.
"For three decades, Simulations Plus has helped pharmaceutical and biotechnology organizations apply modeling and simulation with confidence across drug development. Our collaboration with NVIDIA brings together validated science, accelerated computing, and AI capabilities in a way that expands what scientific teams are able to explore and accomplish," said Shawn O’Connor, Chief Executive Officer of Simulations Plus.
The two firms said they intend to involve select pharmaceutical partners to assess the capabilities within real-world drug development workflows. Initial pilots will target high-complexity modeling use cases, where the combination of validated scientific engines and accelerated AI-enabled computation may be most immediately relevant.
Summary of market and technical developments:
- Simulations Plus' validated PBPK, PK/PD and QSP engines will be linked with NVIDIA's GPU and AI infrastructure.
- NVIDIA will contribute GPU-native optimization and accelerated inference expertise, plus access to its BioNeMo platform and partner network.
- Early testing shows up to a 75% decrease in end-to-end QSP modeling time; pharmaceutical partners will be engaged for real-world evaluation with an initial emphasis on complex modeling scenarios.