Major Breakthrough: AI Creates a New Drug Candidate in Just 21 Days

In a world first, Insilico Medicine, a Hong Kong-based startup developing deep neural networks for drug discovery, has successfully synthesized and pre-clinically validate a drug candidate in just 25 days, making the drug discovery process, including the designing stage, take about 46 days. According to Insilico's research team and its collaborators at the University of Toronto, the method of designing new kinds of molecules by using a deep generative artificial intelligence (AI) model – called generative tensorial reinforcement learning (GENTRL) – not only set a record time compared to traditional methods but also proved to be 15 times faster than a typical pharma corporation's efficient R&D process. It's worth pointing out, especially for readers unfamiliar with the big pharmaceutical industry, that it takes more than a decade and millions of dollars to discover and develop a drug candidate. What's even more depressing about this inefficient industry that keeps passing off the illusion of innovation for real innovation, is that in the last twenty-plus years the success rate for a drug candidate entering Phase I trials have stagnated at under 10%. Meanwhile, in pre-clinical phases the failure rates for new compounds is over 99%.