Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind and Nobel laureate, announced that AI-designed drugs will enter clinical trials by the end of 2025. He made this statement during a fireside chat at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 21.
These groundbreaking drugs are being developed by Isomorphic Labs, a for-profit venture launched by Google’s parent company, Alphabet, in 2021. Isomorphic Labs aims to reinvent the drug discovery process using AI, which could transform the pharmaceutical industry. Hassabis is confident that AI will play a significant role in accelerating drug discovery.
Hassabis emphasized that AI in science extends beyond large language models and even beyond AlphaFold.
He mentioned AlphaFold2, an AI model that predicts protein structures, for which he and John Jumper won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024.
AlphaFold has already predicted the 3D structures of 200 million proteins, a task that would have taken billions of years using traditional methods. The new version, AlphaFold3, enhances its capabilities to analyze protein interactions and their roles in biological functions.
Ardem Patapoutian, a fellow Nobel laureate, praised AlphaFold as one of the most remarkable advancements in science, drastically improving the speed of protein structure analysis. While AI has shown great potential in areas like protein structure prediction, it could also help unlock the mysteries of the brain. Patapoutian noted that while current technology can predict behavior in simple organisms, understanding complex brains remains a challenge. AI may hold the key to deciphering these complexities in neuroscience.
Looking forward, Hassabis envisions a “virtual cell” simulation that will revolutionize biological research. This technology would enable scientists to observe proteins in their natural environment within cells, providing valuable insights into their functions.
