Case Study

AI for IND Submissions: How Dark Horse Consulting Scaled Regulatory Document Drafting with CentaurAI

Dark Horse Consulting partnered with Roko Labs to transform how Investigational New Drug (IND) applications are authored by building CentaurAI, an AI‑powered regulatory drafting platform. CentaurAI enables subject matter experts to generate high‑quality regulatory content faster by combining AI automation with human oversight. By shifting prompt engineering into the hands of domain experts, DHC scaled efficiency, reduced costs, and accelerated IND submission timelines without sacrificing regulatory quality.

Case Study

AI for IND Submissions: How Dark Horse Consulting Scaled Regulatory Document Drafting with CentaurAI

Dark Horse Consulting partnered with Roko Labs to transform how Investigational New Drug (IND) applications are authored by building CentaurAI, an AI‑powered regulatory drafting platform. CentaurAI enables subject matter experts to generate high‑quality regulatory content faster by combining AI automation with human oversight. By shifting prompt engineering into the hands of domain experts, DHC scaled efficiency, reduced costs, and accelerated IND submission timelines without sacrificing regulatory quality.

AI workflow for IND submissions showing how Centaur.ai combines prompt control, draft generation, and human expert review to scale regulatory writing without compromising quality.

Client

Dark Horse Consulting Group

https://www.darkhorseconsultinggroup.com/

Industry

Healthcare & Life Sciences

Services

Analysis & Design Source Document Vectorization Prompt Engineering Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

Project Duration

Ongoing development project

AI workflow for IND submissions showing how Centaur.ai combines prompt control, draft generation, and human expert review to scale regulatory writing without compromising quality.

Client

Dark Horse Consulting Group

https://www.darkhorseconsultinggroup.com/

Industry

Healthcare & Life Sciences

Services

Analysis & Design Source Document Vectorization Prompt Engineering Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

Project Duration

Ongoing development project

AI workflow for IND submissions showing how Centaur.ai combines prompt control, draft generation, and human expert review to scale regulatory writing without compromising quality.

Client

Dark Horse Consulting Group

https://www.darkhorseconsultinggroup.com/

Industry

Healthcare & Life Sciences

Services

Analysis & Design Source Document Vectorization Prompt Engineering Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)

Project Duration

Ongoing development project

Overview

Dark Horse Consulting (DHC) is a leading pharmaceutical regulatory consulting firm that helps biotech and life sciences companies navigate complex regulatory processes, including IND applications. As regulatory requirements and submission complexity increased, DHC faced growing pressure to: • Reduce operational costs • Accelerate IND submission timelines • Scale regulatory writing output without increasing headcount • Maintain the highest standards of regulatory accuracy and consistency To stay competitive in a rapidly evolving life sciences landscape, DHC partnered with Roko Labs to explore how AI for regulatory writing could support IND submissions without compromising expert driven quality. What began as a focused proof of concept evolved into CentaurAI, a scalable, AI-powered internal regulatory platform that enables consultants to generate high-quality regulatory content faster, while remaining firmly in control of the final output.

The Challenge

IND applications are among the most complex and detail-intensive regulatory documents in the pharmaceutical industry. They span multiple modules, each with deeply nested sections requiring specialized domain expertise, precision, and cross section consistency. Before the engagement: • Regulatory drafting was entirely manual and time intensive • Highly skilled consultants handled every stage of content creation • Early experimentation with AI required constant back and forth between SMEs and engineers • Prompt engineering became a bottleneck rather than an accelerator An initial proof of concept demonstrated that AI could generate draft IND content with approximately 85% accuracy, but scaling this approach across the full IND exposed a new challenge: how to deploy AI across a complex regulatory framework without increasing dependence on engineering resources or disrupting expert workflows.

Overview

Dark Horse Consulting (DHC) is a leading pharmaceutical regulatory consulting firm that helps biotech and life sciences companies navigate complex regulatory processes, including IND applications. As regulatory requirements and submission complexity increased, DHC faced growing pressure to: • Reduce operational costs • Accelerate IND submission timelines • Scale regulatory writing output without increasing headcount • Maintain the highest standards of regulatory accuracy and consistency To stay competitive in a rapidly evolving life sciences landscape, DHC partnered with Roko Labs to explore how AI for regulatory writing could support IND submissions without compromising expert driven quality. What began as a focused proof of concept evolved into CentaurAI, a scalable, AI-powered internal regulatory platform that enables consultants to generate high-quality regulatory content faster, while remaining firmly in control of the final output.

The Challenge

IND applications are among the most complex and detail-intensive regulatory documents in the pharmaceutical industry. They span multiple modules, each with deeply nested sections requiring specialized domain expertise, precision, and cross section consistency. Before the engagement: • Regulatory drafting was entirely manual and time intensive • Highly skilled consultants handled every stage of content creation • Early experimentation with AI required constant back and forth between SMEs and engineers • Prompt engineering became a bottleneck rather than an accelerator An initial proof of concept demonstrated that AI could generate draft IND content with approximately 85% accuracy, but scaling this approach across the full IND exposed a new challenge: how to deploy AI across a complex regulatory framework without increasing dependence on engineering resources or disrupting expert workflows.

Overview

Dark Horse Consulting (DHC) is a leading pharmaceutical regulatory consulting firm that helps biotech and life sciences companies navigate complex regulatory processes, including IND applications. As regulatory requirements and submission complexity increased, DHC faced growing pressure to: • Reduce operational costs • Accelerate IND submission timelines • Scale regulatory writing output without increasing headcount • Maintain the highest standards of regulatory accuracy and consistency To stay competitive in a rapidly evolving life sciences landscape, DHC partnered with Roko Labs to explore how AI for regulatory writing could support IND submissions without compromising expert driven quality. What began as a focused proof of concept evolved into CentaurAI, a scalable, AI-powered internal regulatory platform that enables consultants to generate high-quality regulatory content faster, while remaining firmly in control of the final output.

The Challenge

IND applications are among the most complex and detail-intensive regulatory documents in the pharmaceutical industry. They span multiple modules, each with deeply nested sections requiring specialized domain expertise, precision, and cross section consistency. Before the engagement: • Regulatory drafting was entirely manual and time intensive • Highly skilled consultants handled every stage of content creation • Early experimentation with AI required constant back and forth between SMEs and engineers • Prompt engineering became a bottleneck rather than an accelerator An initial proof of concept demonstrated that AI could generate draft IND content with approximately 85% accuracy, but scaling this approach across the full IND exposed a new challenge: how to deploy AI across a complex regulatory framework without increasing dependence on engineering resources or disrupting expert workflows.

Timeline illustrating the phased deployment of Centaur.ai for IND submissions, from research and launch to scaling and optimization of AI‑driven regulatory writing.

Scroll Full Timeline

Key Innovation:
The Prompt Manager

Roko Labs and DHC reimagined their approach to AI driven regulatory writing with a new product called CentaurAI. Instead of scaling AI usage section by section, or relying on engineers to continually refine prompts, the teams built a flexible AI framework and internal tooling layer that placed control directly in the hands of regulatory subject matter experts.

At the core of CentaurAI is the Prompt Manager, an interface that allows DHC consultants to:

• View and edit prompts aligned to specific IND sections
• Define structured inputs and expected regulatory outputs
• Iteratively refine AI behavior based on domain expertise

Rather than acting as intermediaries, Roko Labs focused on enablement: building the systems, structure, and AI infrastructure that allow regulatory experts to drive outcomes directly.

A New Model
for AI Delivery

This approach fundamentally changed collaboration between the technical and the regulatory teams.

Instead of:

• SMEs explaining requirements to engineers
• Engineers translating those requirements into prompts
• SMEs validating AI output

DHC consultants could:

• Directly shape AI-generated regulatory content
• Experiment and iterate on IND sections independently
• Engage Roko Labs only for deeper technical challenges

“We realized pretty quickly that if we kept trying to do this section by section, we’d be working on this forever. The breakthrough was flipping the model: giving the client the keys. Instead of us being the bottleneck, we built the tooling and framework so their experts could actually drive the prompt engineering themselves. That’s what made it scalable.”
Erin Ryan, SVP Product Management, Roko Labs

The result was a clear shift from dependency to expert empowerment.

Centaur.ai regulatory writing platform generating AI‑assisted IND document drafts with human expert review, enabling faster and scalable IND submissions.
Laboratory scientist conducting research with a microscope, representing the scientific foundation of IND submissions supported by AI‑assisted regulatory writing.
Laptop displaying the Centaur.ai platform interface, where AI generates draft IND regulatory content that can be reviewed and refined by subject matter experts, illustrating a human‑in‑the‑loop approach to scalable regulatory writing.
Centaur.ai regulatory writing platform generating AI‑assisted IND document drafts with human expert review, enabling faster and scalable IND submissions.
Laboratory scientist conducting research with a microscope, representing the scientific foundation of IND submissions supported by AI‑assisted regulatory writing.
Centaur.ai regulatory writing platform generating AI‑assisted IND document drafts with human expert review, enabling faster and scalable IND submissions.
Laboratory scientist conducting research with a microscope, representing the scientific foundation of IND submissions supported by AI‑assisted regulatory writing.
Laptop displaying the Centaur.ai platform interface, where AI generates draft IND regulatory content that can be reviewed and refined by subject matter experts, illustrating a human‑in‑the‑loop approach to scalable regulatory writing.

The CentaurAI Platform

CentaurAI combines structured AI workflows with flexible expert control to support regulatory document automation at scale:

Modular Prompt Framework

·      Each IND section is supported by structured prompts that combine general regulatory guidance with section specific logic.

Human in the Loop Review

·      AI generates draft content that reaches approximately 85% completeness, while subject matter experts refine and finalize the remaining 15%.

Large Document Processing

·      The platform supports summarization and synthesis of complex regulatory source materials, including documents thousands of pages long.

Cross Section Intelligence

·      Dependencies between IND sections are incorporated into the workflow, improving consistency, traceability, and completeness across submissions.

Results & Impact

Efficiency Gains
• AI generated IND drafts reach ~85% completeness
• Significant reduction in manual regulatory drafting effort
• Faster iteration cycles across all IND sections

Operational Impact
• Increased regulatory throughput without increasing team size
• Reduced reliance on engineering support
• More time allocated to high value expert review and strategy

Strategic Advantage
• Lower operational costs
• Faster IND submission timelines
• Stronger competitive positioning in pharmaceutical regulatory consulting

Qualitative Outcomes
• Empowered regulatory subject matter experts
• Improved collaboration between domain and technical teams
• A scalable, sustainable model for AI adoption in regulatory writing

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