The promise of ar ti fi cial in tel li gence is that ma chines can wean man u fac tur ers away from the breadth of re sources it takes to dis cov er a po ten tial ly po tent com pound, and lever age the med ical con di tions it could be used to treat. Alex Zha voronkov, whose Hong Kong-based AI-shop In sil i co Med i cine has en trenched it self in the ten ta cles of bio phar ma R&D, now has some da ta to bol ster the fer vor and in vest ment that AI has drummed up. On Mon day, Zha voronkov and his fel low AI scouts from Wuxi and sci en tists from the Uni ver si ty of Toron to, pub lished a pa per in Na ture Biotech nol o gy that sup port ed the fea si bil i ty of em ploy ing a ma chine learn ing ap proach -- gen er a tive ad ver sar i al net works (GANs) and re in force ment learn ing -- for de no vo drug de sign. The re searchers found that they were able to iden ti fy a myr i ad of com pounds tar get ing a pro tein called Dis coidin do main re cep tor 1 (DDR1) -- which is ex pressed in ep ithe lial cells and in volved in fi bro sis -- in a swift 21 days. Af ter that, six mol e cules were then se lect ed for syn the sis in the lab -- those tests re vealed four with po ten tial.