drug discovery

Oxford Nanoimaging (ONI) recently launched the Aplo Scope super-resolution microscope that pushes imaging precision to 20 nm. The Aplo Scope integrates lasers, optics, chemistry, and software in a compact footprint, helping researchers capture and analyze molecular interactions at the nanoscale. With its user-friendly design and portability, ONI aims to simplify super-resolution microscopy and potentially reduce…

An analysis of FDA approvals across these five years shows small molecules remain central to modern therapeutics, even as complex biologics—particularly monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), antibody–drug conjugates (ADCs), and next-generation modalities—are on the rise. Steady R&D investment in these advanced approaches reflects growing clinical confidence in targeted therapies that address difficult or rare disease pathways. 1.…

Today’s large language models can be as unreliable as they are eloquent. Their tendency to fabricate facts and lose the thread makes them risky tools for scientific research, especially in highly regulated industries like pharmaceuticals and chemistry. They also struggle to provide sources and will fabricate a bogus academic journal without batting an eye. Speaking…

In 2024, we saw the expanded use of synthetic data and natural language processing transform drug discovery and development. In a batch of predictions published in December of 2023, one expert predicted that synthetic data was set to “take off” in drug research. In 2025, the pendulum could begin swinging back the other way, according…

Swiss pharma giants Novartis and Roche consistently rank among the top pharma companies in terms of revenue. In 2024, the two companies are also leading in total international patent volume. Meanwhile, smaller firms like Incyte and Vertex Pharma are punching above their weight in market impact. For instance, Incyte, with a market cap of just…

Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) has captivated the world, and for good reason. Platforms like ChatGPT have demonstrated capabilities that gave the general public a deeper understanding of AI’s capabilities. AI, too, is showing potential in drug discovery. From designing novel drug molecules to predicting protein structures, AI is offering a new path forward, potentially accelerating…

As a journalist interested in decoding AI and its impact on the research landscape, I recently took Insilico Medicine’s DORA (Draft Outline Research Assistant) for a test drive, a new platform summarized here. DORA, a specialized agentic-based tool aims to draft scientific content while promising to slash the time and effort required to produce first…

NVIDIA was founded in 1993 when Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem met at a Denny’s restaurant near San Jose. With just $40,000 in starting capital, they sketched out their vision for the company over diner food. In its early days, the silicon chip industry was laboratory-based, empirical-based. Since then, the industry has shifted…

A new study, published by Frontiers in Space, reveals promising results from an experiment on the International Space Station (ISS) for treating and preventing post-traumatic osteoarthritis (PTOA). This condition affects roughly one-fifth of the 650 million people worldwide with osteoarthritis. Using a human tissue chip model on the International Space Station, the ISS researchers observed…

Featured on the cover of Nature Machine Intelligence, one of Iambic Therapeutics‘ AI platforms, known as NeuralPLexer, can accurately predict protein-ligand complex structures. The platform excels at predicting the complex 3D structures formed when proteins bind with drug-like molecules. In a benchmark study featured in the publication, NeuralPLexer outperformed other systems, including AlphaFold2, in its…

What’s the difference between a multimodal generative AI system to plan a vacation itinerary versus guiding cancer treatment? For the former, data quality is a definite plus, but for the latter, it’s indispensable. “If I ask ChatGPT to plan a vacation for me and it spits out something, I might sit there and second guess…

The life sciences industry is abuzz with the potential of generative AI, but its application in the highly regulated pharmaceutical sector faces challenges. As Jane Lomax, Ph.D., head of ontologies at Elsevier’s SciBite subsidiary notes, “Everyone across the whole industry is experimenting with it. But no one knows for sure yet how best to use…

Dandelion Health, the maker of a real-world data and clinical AI platform, has launched the first multimodal real-world clinical dataset focused on uncovering insights and opportunities related to GLP-1 receptor agonist drugs. The company describes the GLP-1 data library as “the first multimodal real-world clinical dataset” related to GLP-1 receptor agonists. The library is sourced…

Last week, Google DeepMind launched AlphaFold 3, a significant update to its predecessor, AlphaFold 2. The latter has profoundly influenced structural biology and biomedicine in recent years while also attracting some skepticism. While AlphaFold 2 could accurately predict the structures of vast swathes of proteins, AlphaFold 3 ups the ante. It offers higher accuracy and…

Isomorphic Labs and Google DeepMind have unveiled AlphaFold 3, a powerful AI system that draws on a novel diffusion-based architecture to accurately model the structures of complexes containing proteins, nucleic acids, DNA and RNA strands, small molecules, ions and modified residues. Diffusion models are a type of generative model that has won significant popularity in…

Over the past few decades, structural biology has undergone a quiet renaissance, thanks in large part to technological advances in cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and computational techniques. Cryo-EM has emerged as a powerful tool for determining the high-resolution structures of proteins and protein complexes, complementing traditional methods like X-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)…

[Updated May 10, 2024] In the face of rising R&D costs and growing pricing pressures from payers, the pharma and biotech sectors continue to transform to adapt to an evolving landscape. While workforce reductions persist in 2024 for some companies, major players like AbbVie, AGC Biologics, Amgen, Novartis and Thermo Fisher Scientific are demonstrating confidence…

The top 20 healthcare-focused biotech companies collectively raised $2.9 billion in the first quarter of 2024, according to data sourced from Crunchbase. That represents a 161% increase compared to the $1.1 billion raised by the 20 largest funding rounds involving healthcare-focused biotech companies in Q1 2023, indicating more confident bets on the market viability of…

Atomwise’s AIMS (Artificial Intelligence Molecule Screening) project has demonstrated significant potential to accelerate drug discovery. In a landmark multiyear study published in Nature Scientific Reports, the project used Atomwise’s AI platform, AtomNet, to successfully identify structurally novel compounds across a diverse range of therapeutic targets. In the virtual high-throughput screening (HTS) study, AtomNet analyzed 318…

The University of Pittsburgh’s recent, significant expansion of its high-performance computing capabilities, courtesy of a gift from Dell Technologies, indicates a strategic commitment to using large-scale data analysis for faster translational research. The additional 9.672 gigaFLOPS of computational power – translating to nearly 9.7 trillion additional computations per second – could help Pitt’s Innovation Hub…

In a packed panel discussion at GTC, moderated by NVIDIA Founder and CEO Jensen Huang, the architects of the groundbreaking transformer model gathered to explore their creation’s potential. The panel featured seven of the eight authors of the seminal “Attention Is All You Need Paper” paper, which introduced transformers — a type of neural network…

Flow chemistry techniques are increasingly being used in drug discovery to provide cost-effective access to a wide range of structurally diverse small molecule analogs, as well as access to previously underused or inaccessible chemistries. There are several ways that this powerful technique can be used to increase structural diversity when building candidate molecules, including linear…

The buzz surrounding generative AI may be undeniable, but its real-world impact on heavily-regulated sectors like drug discovery continues to evolve. Consequently, most drug candidates, circa 90%, continue to fail. Kimberly Powell, vice president of Healthcare at NVIDIA, believes that a new microservices-based offering known as NIMs (NVIDIA Inference Microservices) could help pharma firms navigate…

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s Frontier, the world’s first exascale supercomputer with its dizzying 1.1 exaflop speed, is a game-changer for scientific domains ranging from drug discovery to material science and oceanography. The computer holds the top spot on the TOP500 list, an independent ranking of the world’s most powerful supercomputers. “It’s like having a million…

In episode 4 of AI Meets Life Sci, Kayleen Brown, managing editor at DeviceTalks and Brian Buntz, pharma and biotech editor, chat with Helen Merianos, Ph.D., head of R+D portfolio strategy at Sanofi and Michelle Longmire, MD, CEO of Medable. The focus? The two-fold application of AI in their respective companies’ technologies, both for scientific advancement…