Pharmaceutical industry on the eve of a major upheaval? The father of DeepMind under Google claims: AI drug development will "disrupt" in "months" instead of "years"

According to the Zhitong Finance APP, new drug development often takes years and has a very high failure rate. However, artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to change this situation. Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of DeepMind, Google's AI lab, and Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, stated that AI will soon reduce the time for new drug development from years to months. In an interview, Demis Hassabis said, "In the coming years, I hope to shorten this time to months rather than years. I believe this is possible, and it may even be faster."

Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies have been promoting AI-driven drug development, claiming it can accelerate patient access to new therapies, reduce development costs, and respond more quickly to medical crises. Significant progress has been made in computing in this field, utilizing algorithms to process vast amounts of molecular data. However, no AI-designed drugs have successfully completed clinical trials, meaning that no such drugs have been truly applied in patient treatment.

In addition to being the head of DeepMind, Demis Hassabis is also in charge of Isomorphic Labs, a Google subsidiary focused on drug development. Isomorphic Labs was established to commercialize DeepMind's AI system AlphaFold, which can predict protein behavior.

Isomorphic Labs is currently working on finding treatments for cancer and immune system diseases. The company's drug design director, Rebecca Paul, stated that these diseases provide a relatively simpler path for translating algorithmic model results into clinical outcomes. Rebecca Paul has also mentioned that AI-developed drugs will turn many cancers into treatable chronic diseases. She said, "It's hard to give a clear timeline. But we can start thinking about how to solve this problem now."

Since its establishment in 2021, Isomorphic Labs has partnered with pharmaceutical companies Eli Lilly (LLY.US) and Novartis (NVS.US). Last year, Isomorphic Labs announced it was collaborating with Novartis to develop therapies based on three targets—these targets are the proteins or molecules that the drug design is intended to act upon. Demis Hassabis stated that the two companies have now expanded their collaboration to six targets. Rebecca Paul also mentioned that the collaboration between the two companies has "made very good progress," but did not disclose further details.

In January of this year, Demis Hassabis stated that clinical trials for AI-designed drugs would begin by the end of the year. However, this has not yet been realized. In early September of this year, Demis Hassabis said that Isomorphic Labs had demonstrated "the initial few validation points," proving that its drug development had entered the clinical trial phase, but he did not provide specific timing updates. He added, "It's still too early to say." Demis Hassabis stated that his research team is developing a "more advanced" version of AlphaFold, which can not only understand the interactions between proteins but also further expand its functionality. He has mentioned that Isomorphic Labs has the potential to build a company with a market value exceeding $100 billion. Earlier this year, the company completed a $600 million financing round led by Thrive Capital