Anew Labs Unveils Agent-Driven Drug Discovery Engine AnewDDE

On September 17, Anew Labs published a technical report unveiling AnewDDE, an agent-driven drug discovery engine designed to integrate structure prediction, affinity assessment, and molecular design. The company says the engine is intended to create a closed-loop system for biomolecular interaction modeling and molecular design, connecting computational prediction, molecular design, and experimental feedback in the drug discovery workflow.

Anew Labs was formerly the AI for Science drug discovery team at ByteDance. It was spun off as an independent entity on June 10, 2026, with ByteDance retaining a 56% stake. On September 16, Anew Labs announced a $290 million Series A round at a valuation of approximately $1.5 billion, the largest single financing round in China's AI drug discovery sector in 2026.

The company currently has four drug candidates in development. Its lead program, AN-5162, is a small-molecule inhibitor that simultaneously targets three classes of IL-17 family dimers and is described as the first small-molecule pan-IL-17 inhibitor. It is aimed at autoimmune diseases such as psoriasis and has entered the preclinical lead optimization stage. ByteDance first disclosed details of the program at the American Association of Immunologists annual meeting in April 2026.