“Researchers studying Alzheimer’s disease are using artificial intelligence-powered databases to accelerate the drug discovery process by making it easier to sift through vast amounts of biomedical data.

By using those technologies, scientists at the United Kingdom’s Oxford Drug Discovery Institute can speed up the work of digging through journals and databases by nearly ten times—helping to more quickly prioritize which genes or proteins should be selected for further work to generate potential Alzheimer’s drugs, it said.

Biologists at the Oxford Drug Discovery Institute had selected 54 genes from a genome-wide association study that were related to the immune system, all of which are likely targets for lab testing, said Emma Mead, its chief scientific officer. Those targets can include biological structures like genes or proteins, which potential drugs aim to affect.”

From Wall Street Journal.