ai in drug discovery
Maria Soloveychik, CEO of SyntheX
The New Frontiers of Drug Discovery
Maria Soloveychik is a seasoned scientist with a rich background in structural biology and epigenetics. Together with her co-founder, Charly Chahwan, she launched SyntheX—a company that redefines the boundaries of drug discovery by engineering cellular ‘biocomputers.’ These innovative platforms are not just streamlining the search for new drugs; they are unlocking the potential to explore drug mechanisms that were once considered beyond reach.
The Role of AI in Drug Discovery
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is poised to help us navigate bottlenecks in the drug discovery process. Traditional methods often involved serendipitous discoveries through phenotypic screenings or trial-and-error approaches. The number of functional molecules remains limited. The current focus is to build databases of molecules that can enable challenging mechanisms of action, using experimental data. Once the molecules are discovered, refinement of these tool compounds into better drugs is a job that will be perfectly suited for AI-mediated acceleration. Maria says, “As our understanding of drug characteristics improves, we can make much better projections of how to impart these properties onto new molecules with different functions.”
Beyond the molecules, AI will play crucial roles in understanding patient response - who will most likely benefit from which drugs, or equally importantly, could have adverse effects and contraindications. With a more in depth understanding of biomarkers, drug pharmacology and patient responses and metabolism, we can train AI models to enhance the applications of precision of drug development to determine novel and earlier endpoints, safety margins through personalized dosing, and ultimately patient benefit.
Maria highlights that many current drug discovery processes, such as phenotypic screenings, reveal changes in cell behaviors without fully elucidating the underlying mechanisms. AI, however, can accelerate the identification of these mechanisms through enhanced pattern matching with known and well understood cell modulators. AI can further accelerate the development of well understood and explored mechanisms, such as kinase inhibitors. Designing better libraries with experimentally established constraints to use for a particular drug screening task is another valuable application of AI.
Uncharted Territories in Pharmaceutical Science
Despite the advancements, Maria points out critical gaps that remain unaddressed in drug discovery. “The understanding of new drugs, particularly those with novel mechanisms of action, remains a frontier needing more exploration”, Maria says. “For instance, the recent understanding of drugs that manipulate cellular recycling mechanisms and regulate protein levels illustrates the potential of uncovering entirely new therapeutic approaches.”
Maria stresses the importance of imaginative thinking in pushing the boundaries of what is possible in drug discovery. She highlights the need to challenge existing models and integrate more innovative data inputs and screening approaches to discover molecules for entirely new mechanisms of action.
Maria's perspective underscores a dynamic and rapidly evolving pharmaceutical landscape shaped by technological advances and innovative thinking. As AI integrates deeper into the process, the promise of a more systematic, efficient, and patient-specific approach to drug discovery becomes increasingly tangible. Maria's journey from a geneticist to a tech-savy entrepreneur exemplifies the transformative power of merging science with technology to tackle some of the most pressing challenges in healthcare today.
