Finding New Drugs Is Laborious. This AI Startup Is Skipping The Lab Work

Finding New Drugs Is Laborious. Potential Sciences, a startup backed by the UK government, is betting that training AI models on computer-generated biochemical data can speed up the plodding process of developing new drugs. Drug discovery is a needle in a haystack problem. This AI startup wants to simulate the haystack to speed the process up.Photo-Illustration: Jobanny Cabrera; Getty Images A new British startup believes that artificial intelligence is the key to speedrunning the slow and temperamental process of drug design. Potential Sciences plans to build large-scale chemical datasets by using basic principles of physics to simulate interactions between atoms, then small molecules, then complex amino acids and proteins.