The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has affected nearly 271 million people and has claimed 5.32 million lives, the most recent episode being of the delta variant of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The COVID-19 pandemic just adds to the list of infectious diseases that were potential global threats like severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), Ebola, and Zika. Infections like these highlight the need for the development of therapeutic agents to combat emerging pathogens. The process of developing therapeutic solutions to novel viruses is tedious and prohibitively long, taking up to 10 to 15 years of time. The initial step of determining interesting molecules and therapeutic targets for further investigation is crucial due to the vast size of the chemical space, which prevents an exhaustive search using costly experiments and trials.

A cure for cancer and other critical medical conditions could already be in existence as a recent study by Professors of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Steven Atschuler and his wife, Lani Wu has developed a new method that uses artificial intelligence for faster and systematic drug discovery. The new technique reduces the time and cost previously used to search for possible new drugs to treat illnesses and diseases. The husband and wife research team at University Of California-San Francisco (UCSF) designed a new method to make drug discovery faster and at a cheaper cost than that of the traditional method. Atschuler and his wife have worked together since they met as students almost 30 years ago. Their study is informed not only by their extant collaboration but by other previously shared careers in other fields, according to Phys.

A husband-and-wife research team from University Of California-San Francisco(UCSF) was able to develop a new method that uses artificial intelligence for faster and systematic drug discovery. This new method drops the cost and time for searching possible new drugs to treat illnesses and diseases. Professors of Pharmaceutical Chemistry at UCSF, Steven Atschuler and his wife, Lani Wu, have developed a way to make drug discovery faster and at a cheaper cost than that of the traditional method. The duo developed a method that involves engineering reporter cells and using a software program that uses artificial intelligence to scan and search compound libraries. This new method utilizes the cellular biology and computational analytics to find possible new drugs.