OCD Drug Designed by Artificial Intelligence Set to Enter Clinical Trials Front Line Genomics

A new drug created with artificial intelligence (AI) to treat patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) will be entering human clinical trials this March – a first for AI. It has cut the drug development time from four and a half years to just 12 months, accelerating the time it typically takes to develop drugs for clinical trials. Exscientia, an Oxford-based AI start-up, collaborated with the Japanese pharmaceutical firm Sumitomo Dainippon Pharma to develop the OCD drug. It has been difficult to invent new drugs with AI that are safe and effective for humans to use. But, it has been successful with machine learning algorithms to look through data and identify which patients can benefit the most from existing medicines. AI has also been used beyond medical approaches, and has also been used to track the coronavirus outbreak and to tackle America's opioid crisis.