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Verge Labs Releases AI Model After Phase 1b ALS Drug Trial Fails With One-Third Dropout
The company formerly known as Verge Genomics published a postmortem on its failed Phase 1b ALS trial and introduced a new AI model for patient stratification in neurology studies.
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Verge Labs published a postmortem analysis of its failed Phase 1b ALS drug trial last month and released a new AI model designed to solve patient stratification problems for neurology clinical trials. One-third of patients in the trial dropped out because they could not tolerate the drug.
The company, formerly known as Verge Genomics, said the data from the unsuccessful study will serve as a benchmarking dataset for the new model.
Alice Zhang, who co-founded Verge Genomics over a decade ago, stated that sharing learnings from failed trials is important for the company, the field, and ALS broadly. “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.
The company had previously identified two targets that Eli Lilly nominated to its internal pipeline in 2024. Verge Labs’ pivot follows the trial failure and centers on applying its data to improve trial design in neurodegenerative diseases. The article detailing these developments was published on June 16, 2026, by Brittany Trang, STAT’s Health Tech Reporter covering AI in health and medicine.
