We believe AI is especially important for biopharma, because AI can understand biology in a way humans cannot. The reason that ChatGPT is so impressive is that the underlying Transformer technology can “understand” ordinary languages like English. Transformers can also “understand” large bio-molecules like proteins. Traditionally drug development has involved informed trial and error to discover molecules, followed by long, expensive clinical trials, in which more than 90% of drugs fail. With AI drug development can move closer to drug design, speeding up the process and creating better-targeted drugs. Clinical trials can move from exploring the properties of a molecule that has been discovered to confirming that the design works as intended. This is likely to shorten their duration, and make the likelihood of success much greater. Biopharma moves slowly, but over time we believe it will be disrupted more by AI than almost any other industry.
Read the report here.
