Researchers use AI to cut drug-development time and cost

Developing a new drug can cost billions of dollars and take a dozen or more years to bring to market. Two Israeli researchers have applied artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning to shave time and money off the drug-discovery process. Instead of searching for the appropriate molecules to use in a new medicine, as is done today, they enabled a computer to make smart predictions without human guidance. Shahar Harel and Kira Radinsky at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology fed into their computer system hundreds of thousands of known molecules as well as the chemical composition of all FDA-approved drugs up until 1950. Aided by AI, the computer came up with new potential molecules by making sometimes unexpected correlations from within this massive sample.