MIT Researchers Develop Artificial Intelligence That Can Search for New Drug Compounds

What would you get if you cross ibuprofen with aspirin? No one is sure, but a team of MIT researchers headed by Alán Aspuru-Guzik has developed an artificial intelligence program that could provide an answer to this by recommending a molecular structure that amalgamates properties of both the medications. The program could assist in finding new drug compounds. So far, researchers have relied on software that crawls through huge pools of candidate molecules with the help of rules crafted by chemists to predict or identify useful structures. This technique often requires humans, the precision of simulations, and the necessary processing power.