How Artificial Intelligence is used to find cancer cures

Four out of 10--that's how many Americans the National Cancer Institute estimates will be diagnosed with cancer at some point. While 33 percent of those patients won't live longer than five years, giving them precious little time to find effective treatments, it takes over a decade to bring new cancer drugs to market. The process involves animal testing, human trials and regulatory review--a gantlet through which less than 7 percent of experimental medicines successfully pass. Is it any wonder, then, that there are less than 2,000 Food and Drug Administration-approved pharmaceuticals on the market? Insilico Medicine, a Baltimore-based biotech research company, hopes to revolutionize drug development by slashing the time necessary for research with the help of artificial intelligence (AI). In a study published in the medical journal Oncotarget, a team led by Insilico Medicine details their approach.