AI may help speed up drugs development and could have ‘immense’ impact in China, study finds
- Artificial intelligence took three weeks to identify six substances that block an enzyme responsible for fibrosis and other illnesses, according to paper
- But ethics expert warns it is ‘a long-term innovation with a complicated learning curve’ and developers and investors ‘should proceed with caution’
Artificial intelligence could help to drastically speed up the discovery of new drugs, and it may have an “immense” impact on China’s biomedical industry, according to a study by a Hong Kong-based pharmaceutical research firm.
Insilico Medicine’s paper, published in the journal Nature Biotechnology on Monday, describes a new AI system that was used to successfully identify six substances that block a certain enzyme responsible for fibrosis and other illnesses. One of the substances was later found to be effective in treating mice with renal fibrosis.
The whole process of identification was completed in three weeks – much faster than the traditional drug discovery process which involves testing thousands of substances over 10 to 20 years and can cost from US$500 million to US$2.6 billion, according to the study. Whittling down the lead molecules for clinical trials in human patients then requires further time and energy.
The study’s findings could potentially revolutionise the development of new drugs and result in huge time and cost savings for pharmaceutical companies.
