Cell by Cell: Deep Learning Powers Drug Discovery Effort for Hundreds of Rare Diseases

These diseases attract a ton of research effort and funding, and for good reason: They afflict tens of millions of people each year. But there are about 7,000 known rare diseases that rarely get attention. Also called "orphan" diseases, these conditions collectively affect about 400 million worldwide and were historically neglected by the drug industry, which could not justify the costs of developing drugs to address the small number of affected patients. Salt Lake City-based Recursion Pharmaceuticals focuses on drug discovery across several therapeutic areas, including hundreds of rare diseases that currently lack treatments -- such as Sandhoff disease, an inherited, often-fatal disorder that destroys neurons in an infant's brain and spinal cord. The condition affects less than 1 in 100,000 people in Europe.