AI is strong in the pharmaceutical industry to improve drug research and development efficiency

[ China Pharmaceutical Network Technology News ] AI pharmaceutical has become a hot word in the field of medicine. Many large drug research and development institutions in China have introduced AI, hoping to shorten the cycle and cost of new drug research and development through AI technology. At present, AI technology has played an important role in the development of new drugs, such as screening of active compounds, drug evaluation and clinical trials.

AI Pharma can not only save a lot of cost for pharmaceutical companies, but also greatly reduce the risk of drug testing, thus attracting pharmaceutical companies to invest more in the production of rare drugs and promote their R&D and production.

Some experts said that at the current stage, AI has been involved in drug research and development, but it only plays a supporting role. Its "work scope" is mainly on drug structure, disease pathophysiological mechanism, efficacy of existing drugs, sample observation under microscope, etc. The results were analyzed rapidly to assist in target drug development, drug candidate mining, compound screening, and drug crystal form prediction.

In drug development, AI is an indispensable aid. For example, sometimes humans cannot examine a large number of tiny cells through the eyes, and by training a computer, they can quickly find a specific cell and form valuable conclusions.

Whether it is in the field of Western medicine or Chinese medicine, there are actually AI figures. In the field of traditional Chinese medicine, Nobel Prize winner Tu Yu found the source of drug extraction of artemisinin by reading a large number of Chinese medical literature. However, the classics of Chinese medicine are so vast that human beings can read and analyze them one by one. It takes a long time and is inefficient. If you let the machine "read ancient books", and then use the effective analysis of big data, you will find many effective drugs based on Chinese herbal medicine.

For pharmaceutical companies, AI Pharmaceuticals can reduce the cost of research and development in addition to speeding up drug development. The author understands that the idea of ​​some AI-related start-up teams is to calculate the results that can be obtained by experimenting in the traditional, so as to improve the scope and efficiency of drug development and screening, and accelerate drug development.

At present, many pharmaceutical companies are betting on AI pharmaceuticals. For example, in 2015, Merck and Atomwise in the United States took the drug in hand; in 2016, Johnson & Johnson and the British AI technology development and application company BenevolentAI reached a new drug research and development work. In February, pharmaceutical giant Roche acquired a full stake in the tumor big data company Flatrion Health for $1.9 billion and also reached a cooperation agreement with GNS Healthcare.

Compared with foreign pharmaceutical companies' preference for AI pharmaceuticals, most of the domestic pharmaceutical companies are mainly in the research and development of generic drugs, and there are few entrepreneurial teams related to them. Moreover, the current mainstream AI+ pharmaceutical related companies are concentrated in the United States and the United Kingdom, such as Atomwise, Benevolent AI, and Insilico Medicine.

Although AI Pharmaceuticals brings a lot of benefits to the industry, enterprises and even patients, the quality of the data is currently a problem for all AI pharmaceutical related companies. According to industry insiders, on the one hand, data from successful drugs is used to retrospectively validate the model.

On the other hand, the algorithm model is used to predict the monkeys, and the results are verified by experiments. At the same time, the existing models are further optimized, and the algorithm is their vitality. But from the current point of view, quality data is a scarce resource for the entire industry.

At present, AI has already advanced into the traditional pharmaceutical industry. For the development prospects of AI in the traditional pharmaceutical industry, the industry believes that it still needs time to test, because there is currently no new drug developed by AI approved for listing. In addition, whether AI will replace drug developers, experts and scholars also give the answer: AI will not replace drug developers, but drug developers using AI will likely replace those who do not use AI.

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