How artificial intelligence is changing drug discovery

Abstract

Sanofi has signed a deal to use UK start-up Exscientia's artificial-intelligence (AI) platform to hunt for metabolic-disease therapies, and Roche subsidiary Genentech is using an AI system from GNS Healthcare in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to help drive the multinational company's search for cancer treatments. In May 2017, a group including researchers at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, demonstrated the role of a family of proteins called fibroblast growth factors (FGFs) in blood-vessel development (P. Yu et al. Wuxi NextCODE uses AI as part ofits approach of classifying genes according to their roles and other attributes, to look for connections between RNA-sequence variations, expression levels, molecular function and gene location. By searching public databases, Adam generated hypotheses about which genes code for key enzymes that catalyse reactions in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and used robotics to physically test its predictions in a lab.