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How AI uncovers new ways to tackle difficult diseases

Pharmaceutical firms are turning to AI to find new molecules that might be able to tackle disease.

"We can't say we have the first AI discovered and designed molecule approved," says Dr Zhavoronkov, the co-founder and CEO of US-based start-up Insilico Medicine. The first is in identifying, at the molecular level, the therapeutic target that it is intended the drug will act to correct, such as a certain gene or protein being altered by the disease in a way it shouldn't. Insilico Medicine, founded in 2014 and which has received more than $425m in funding, used AI for both steps, as well as to predict the probability of success in clinical trials which it then feeds back into its drug discovery work.

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