DeepMind: AI Set to Slash Drug Discovery Timeline from Years to Months

Gelonghui September 12 | Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind, an artificial intelligence lab under Alphabet, and Nobel Prize winner, stated that discovering new drugs takes years and comes with astonishing failure rates. However, he believes that within the next few years, AI can shorten this duration to just a few months, or even faster. Hassabis oversees the AI department at Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs, an Alphabet subsidiary focused on drug discovery. Since its establishment in 2021, Isomorphic Labs has reached collaboration agreements with Eli Lilly and Novartis. Although no AI-designed drugs have successfully completed clinical trials yet, Hassabis revealed in January that his company would begin clinical trials for AI-designed drugs by the end of the year. In early September, he noted that the company had demonstrated several preliminary proof points to advance drugs into trials but did not provide specific timing updates.