Google’s Parent Company Alphabet Opens ‘AI-First’ Labs To Develop Medicines
Image ID 174935295 © via BiancoBlue | Dreamstime.com
Alphabet Inc, Google’s parent firm, has announced its new venture — Isomorphic Labs — which will make use of artificial intelligence to discover new medicines. The drug startup will come under the company’s London research laboratory, DeepMind.
According to Bloomberg, DeepMind’s algorithms have aided scientists in predicting the shapes of proteins, and this technology could be put to use in the new laboratory to study and invent new drugs. Demis Hassabis, the head of DeepMind, will take charge of Isomorphic Labs’ “first phase.”
“The pandemic has brought to the fore the vital work that brilliant scientists and clinicians do every day to understand and combat disease,” said Hassabis in a blog post.
“We believe that the foundational use of cutting edge computational and AI methods can help scientists take their wok to the next level, and massively accelerate the drug discovery process.”
One of DeepMind’s breakthroughs, which will undoubtedly help move the new organization further along the path of creating innovative and effective medicines, is the AlphaFold2. As per CNET, the algorithm uses AI to help predict the 3D structure of a protein, just by analyzing its amino acid sequence.
“AI methods will increasingly be used not just for analyzing data, but to also build powerful predictive and generative models of complex biological phenomena. AlphaFold2 is an important first proof point of this, but there is also much more to come,” Hassabis explained.
[via Bloomberg and CNET, cover image BiancoBlue | Dreamstime.com]
Also check out these recent news
