Demis Hassabis, the CEO of Google DeepMind, emphasized at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona the critical role artificial intelligence (AI) would play in transforming the drug development process. Drug discovery could be greatly accelerated by Alphafold, a system developed by DeepMind, which Google purchased in 2014. Alphafold is able to predict protein shapes.
The capacity of Alphafold to precisely anticipate protein structures creates new opportunities for the development of targeted therapeutic medicines. This innovative technology has the potential to completely transform the pharmaceutical sector by allowing for the exact targeting of therapeutic ingredients and accelerating the drug discovery procedures.
Hassabis highlighted the goal of Isomorphic Labs, which he co-founded in 2021, to use AI to create pharmaceutical molecules that target proteins selectively in order to minimize side effects. By reducing the length of the medication design process from years to only months, Isomorphic’s novel approach has the potential to completely change the drug development industry.
With agreements worth up to $3 billion, Isomorphic has partnered with big pharma like Novartis and Eli Lilly, demonstrating the growing importance of AI in drug development. These partnerships demonstrate how the pharmaceutical sector is undergoing a paradigm shift and how important medical problems are increasingly being solved by AI.
AI is also being used by health tech firms, such as Nuclera, to speed up the drug discovery process. Thanks to its technique, Nuclera can quickly identify the proteins needed to create new drugs and vaccines, greatly reducing the time required for the usually lengthy process of drug discovery.
The growing use of AI in healthcare is a reflection of its enormous promise for diagnosing, treating, and detecting diseases. With around 4,500 health tech businesses in the UK alone, ethical AI use is essential to changing the face of healthcare and solving pressing medical issues.