ai pharmaceutical manufacturing opens up greater imagination space
2024-08-29
한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina
there is a special experimental area in the shijiazhuang no. 4 pharmaceutical research institute. there are no fancy instruments, test tubes or reagents, but only a few ordinary-looking computers.
"this is our ai+ new drug research and development studio. what keeps flashing on the screen is the ai drug screening data." on august 12, li yuan, deputy director of the innovation department of the drug research institute, pointed to the screen on the computer and told reporters that this might be the starting point of a new drug in the near future.
on august 12, li yuan (left) inspected the analysis of innovative drugs in the laboratory. photo by hebei daily reporter zhou jie
we all know that ai can write poetry and draw pictures, but what kind of sparks will be created when ai meets pharmaceutical manufacturing?
in the field of drug research and development, the "double ten rule" is widely circulated, which means that it takes 10 years and $1 billion to successfully develop a new drug. "drug discovery is largely subject to chance, and the technical difficulty is comparable to finding a needle in a haystack," said li yuan.
in order to solve the "dilemma" of traditional drug screening, shisi pharmaceutical began to lay out in the new track of artificial intelligence new drug research and development in 2022. li yuan, who graduated with a doctorate from jilin university, has a new dream of ai "smart medicine" and led her colleagues to start from scratch and build an ai-assisted drug screening platform.
what’s so special about this new platform?
while operating the computer, li yuan explained to the reporter: "the computer here is connected to the server in the main control room on the first floor. when high-throughput virtual screening is performed, 96 central processing units will work together to perform screening 24 hours a day."
"the application of ai technology can help us design molecules more intelligently, synthesize molecules faster, and quickly determine the position of the 'needle'." li yuan explained that ai, with its data and algorithm advantages, can, on the one hand, accelerate molecular virtual screening, improve efficiency and success rate; on the other hand, it will break through the constraints of traditional experience and bring new inspiration to everyone.
ai is bringing more possibilities to new drug research and development. "during the research and development process, we faced failure every day. there was a period of time when i didn't go home for two months, and i lived and ate at the company." recalling the hardships of the process, li yuan was deeply touched. "to develop innovative drugs, you must be able to endure loneliness. all failures will help you grow."
at present, li yuan and her team are stepping up the screening and design of new drugs for diabetes, kidney disease, hypertension, etc., and have made phased progress. "with the help of this platform, we have screened more than 100 new compounds from a 300 million-level compound library in just over a month. in the past, this would have taken at least 2 to 3 years," she said excitedly.
"in the field of ai pharmaceuticals, data is the foundation and the key to solving problems." in li yuan's view, the more high-quality data there is, the smarter the ai "brain" will be. "the future direction of competition must be databases." she said, for example, for a new target, pharmaceutical companies that have built a database can first screen it themselves, find suitable candidate molecules, and then further develop them. this is like starting early in the race of drug development and having a first-mover advantage.
"although there are no drugs developed with the assistance of ai technology on the market yet, with the continuous breakthroughs in data algorithms, there is huge room for imagination in the future. we are working hard in this direction." li yuan is full of expectations.
"for pharmaceuticals, ai is a tool to break the 'double ten law'; for enterprises, ai provides an opportunity to overtake others." wu hengyao, president of shijiazhuang no. 4 pharmaceutical group, said that they will increase their exploration efforts in this cutting-edge field, promote more "pharmaceuticals" to "smart drugs", and benefit more patients. (hebei daily reporter zhou jie)
