Developing a new drug is a long, complicated and not to mention, an expensive process that takes years before you get to the human trial. Therefore world’s leading drug companies are turning to artificial intelligence to improve the hit-and-miss business of finding new medicines and hoping that computers will be able to simulate the majority of the process, greatly reducing the cost and time involved.
AI systems already play a central role in other hi-tech areas such as the development of driverless cars and facial recognition software, and the aim to harness modern supercomputers and machine learning systems to predict how molecules will behave and how likely they are to make a useful drug, thereby saving time and money on unnecessary tests is not too much to expect.
Scottish AI Biotech, Exscientia, which is fast establishing itself as a key player in the field has teamed up with GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) unveiling a new $43m deal in the field on Sunday. The deal has signed on GSK as a partner in collaboration to advance 10 projects spanning a range of indications and the milestones for Exscientia could total £33M (€37.6M) if all programs are deemed successes.
This deal is closely followed
by the Scottish Biotech’s €250M drug discovery deal with Sanofi, a French multinational Pharma company in May this year.Of course, there is plenty of skepticism about digital drug creation being a fair replacement of the old-fashioned methods of research, but if this partnership and its intention does prove to be successful, the process may be able to spit out potential pills that are close to being ready for tests on humans, saving a lot of resources on the way.
