Using AI to Design Drugs from Scratch - DZone AI

I've written a number of times in the past about the growing use of Artificial Intelligence in the drug discovery process, whether it's in terms of identifying molecules for analysis or predicting potential side effects. A recent paper from a team at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Eshelman School of Pharmacy suggests that AI can now go one step further and design new drug molecules from scratch. Their method, which is known as Reinforcement Learning for Structural Evolution (ReLeaSE), consists of two neural networks that the researchers refer to as the teacher and the student. The teacher component of the system understands the syntax and linguistic rules behind the chemical structures of around 1.7 million biologically active molecules. The student component they learn from these in order to propose molecules that can be used in new medicines.