Google Parent Plans to Use AI Prowess to Invent Medicines

(Bloomberg) — Alphabet Inc. said it has created a new company, called Isomorphic Labs, to use artificial intelligence for drug discovery.

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The new division was spun out of DeepMind, the London research lab of Google’s parent company. DeepMind’s algorithms have made huge advances in predicting the shapes of proteins, a technology that could speed up the development of new drugs and upend the pharmaceutical industry.

In a blog post Thursday announcing the move, Demis Hassabis, the co-founder and head of DeepMind, described Isomorphic Labs as “a commercial venture with the mission to reimagine the entire drug discovery process from the ground up with an AI-first approach.”

Hassabis will be chief executive officer for the new Alphabet company during its “first phase,” a spokesperson said in an email. He will also continue to serve as the head of DeepMind.

Alphabet already has other ventures in medicine. Verily, a biotech unit, has had a wide range of products, but more recently focused on crunching data with partners in the pharmaceutical and health care industry. Calico, a life-extension research firm launched in 2013, has said very little publicly about its work.

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