Alphabet Launches AI Company To Discover New Drugs
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Alphabet Launches AI Company To Discover New Drugs (ft.com)
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msmash
from the how-about-that dept.
Google owner Alphabet has launched an artificial intelligence company to discover new drugs. From a report: UK-registered Isomorphic Labs will use technology from its sister company DeepMind to “to accelerate drug discovery, and ultimately, find cures for some of humanity’s most devastating diseases,” said Demis Hassabis, the head of DeepMind, in a blog post. He added that he would also become the chief executive of Isomorphic Labs. Scientists around the world were awed in July when DeepMind unveiled how its AlphaFold2 technology could be used to predict the shape of every protein in the human body with almost perfect accuracy.
DeepMind’s model can solve one of the trickiest problems in biology by taking a sequence of amino acids and mapping the twists and turns of its shape. The algorithm could help replace or enhance painstaking laboratory work to identify the structures of proteins, which dictate how they behave. Pharmaceutical companies and academic researchers are eager to use the tool — which DeepMind has made available on an open source basis — to discover new targets for drugs. Its speed could cut the time to discovering innovative treatments, although the process of clinical trials is still likely to take several years. DeepMind said it would use the technology to try to find treatments for Chagas disease and Leishmaniasis, two of the most deadly diseases in the world.
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