



The quest to use AI to help find new drugs
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.Eli Lilly Chief Executive Dave Ricks was on stage with Nvidia founder Jensen Huang earlier this year in San Francisco touting the company’s tech prowess when Huang teased him about the painstaking process of developing new drugs.“I’m really hoping that your industry moves from drug discovery which is kind of like wandering around the forest looking for truffles,” Huang said, in front of a crowd of biotech and pharma investors.Indeed, Ricks and the rest of the pharmaceutical industry are looking to expand beyond collecting soil samples and bark pieces to find new drugs and are instead turning their hopes—and investment dollars—to AI. Lilly first announced a partnership with chip-maker Nvidia in October to build what it called the industry’s most powerful supercomputer, and expanded that in January with a $1 billion, five-year collaboration mixing their scientists and engineers in a new Bay Area lab aimed at discovering new medicines with AI tools.They aren’t alone.
Rival Roche has already announced it is building an even bigger supercomputer in partnership with Nvidia. Companies such as GSK, AstraZeneca and Merck have announced billions of dollars worth of partnerships in recent months with tech and AI-focused biotech companies aimed at fully exploiting AI.Drug companies have been talking about the potential for AI to supercharge drug development for years, but it hasn’t materialized in a big way yet.“There was this promise you’d see dramatic improvement” in the rate of success of drug clinical trials as a result of AI, said RBC Capital Markets analyst Trung Huynh.
“I don’t think that’s happened yet. I don’t think there’s definitive proof that AI improves outcomes so far.”Part of the
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