From the first trial to the final medicine is a long, difficult road, which often also ends in a dead end. Waste of money and effort. Dutch researchers are now working to speed up that process by outsourcing the preliminary work to artificial intelligence.
Yes! After scanning more than a thousand molecules, researchers have finally found a substance that penetrates and destroys tumor cells. Maybe this is the cure for cancer. The molecule then enters the malle research mill. The scientists optimize the structure of the molecule and test it first on animal models and then on healthy volunteers. At the end of this process, which will take at least ten years, the conclusion is finally reached: the medicine is not working well enough. Back to the drawing board.
Thousands of molecules
Unfortunately, the above scenario is more common than you might think. Developing new drugs is a slow and difficult process. Each medicine consists of one molecule that activates or suppresses a certain process in the body, for example so that you no longer feel pain or so that pathogenic bacteria are attacked by the immune system. This process is called biological activity, and it means that the molecules interact with the proteins involved in these processes.
Thousands of molecules are scanned annually for this biological activity and thus for their possible medicinal effect, but only a few dozen eventually make it into medicine. The chance that we will find a substance that can help us fight cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and other diseases is therefore very small. And because the studies often come to nothing, developing medicines is very expensive. Scientists are therefore looking for alternative ways to discover new medicines. One is enabling artificial intelligence or artificial intelligence (AI).
Curious about how AI helps with the search for new medicines? You read it in KIJK 5/2023 which will be in stores from April 13 to May 31.
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Text: Renée Moezelaar
Beeld: iStock/Getty Images
