“Last summer, scientists in China reported promising results from clinical tests of a new drug for people with the lung disease idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. The compound, rentosertib, performed well in the phase 2 trial, being safe and well tolerated, and is set for phase 3 and possible approval.

So far so good. But why has this drug been labeled as a breakthrough that could ‘change drug discovery forever’? The answer is that it was discovered not by a diligent chemist or through an arduous trial-and-error assay but by several smart artificial intelligence (AI) models.

Both the drug target and the small-molecule compound were identified by generative AI platforms from Insilico Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts. Rentosertib could be the first true medicine of the AI age, and, crucially, given the expense of drug discovery, it was created on an accelerated schedule.”

From Nature.