AI for the pharmaceutical giant
AI will create new medicines for the pharmaceutical giant GSK
Georgy Golovanov, Hi-tech+
The British pharmaceutical giant, GlaxoSmithKline, is going to open five specialized research centers during 2020 and hire at least 80 highly qualified artificial intelligence specialists from around the world, whose task will be to find drugs for cancer and autoimmune diseases based on functional genetics. GSK is confident that with the help of AI and a new team using mathematical methods, they will be able to at least double the effectiveness of their developments.
In recent years, there has been progress in the use of artificial intelligence algorithms in solving problems facing the pharmaceutical industry. It usually takes years to develop new drugs, but AI can speed up this process and increase the effectiveness of medicines. Currently, only about 10% of new medicines pass all stages of testing and regulatory approval, the Guardian writes. With AI, this percentage can grow significantly.
GSK believes that choosing proteins or other molecules based on genetic data will double the chance of success. This forced the company to invest heavily in the study of the human genome, in the analysis of the work and interaction of genes, cell and gene therapy. These are hundreds of millions of individual data in databases that scientists have not been able to study until recently.
However, the development of computing power and deep learning technology has made the analysis of patterns in huge amounts of data possible.
The new GSK division will be stationed in San Francisco, where the competition for the best AI developers - and they are in short supply in principle – is already high. The main area of scientific interests of the AI team in the new laboratory will be functional genetics.
In addition, the pharmaceutical giant is going to open research centers in London, Heidelberg, Philadelphia and Boston. All of them will start working within the framework of a single program to find drugs for cancer and autoimmune diseases, in particular, rheumatoid arthritis.
Another major pharmaceutical player, Merck, is already using AI services. The Chematica program created for her finds new ways to synthesize drugs, and also complicates the life of competitors by patenting alternative ways of producing drugs.
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