drug discovery

In drug discovery, the difference between a breakthrough and a breakdown can be as small as the twist of a bond. Stereochemistry, the three-dimensional arrangement of atoms, governs how otherwise identical molecules behave in the body: whether they bind the intended target, trigger off-targets, or get cleared in minutes rather than hours. “Shape really does…

Sai Life Sciences, a Hyderabad-based contract research, development, and manufacturing organization (CRDMO) has opened Unit VI, a dedicated veterinary-API facility in Bidar, India, adjacent to the company’s flagship API site. The company positions the site to supply animal-health sponsors and contract customers, citing rising demand for veterinary medicines and the need for dedicated manufacturing capacity…

It turns out that AI really is doing the work. At least a growing chunk of it. Artificial intelligence is spreading through the global workforce like wildfire, dwarfing the adoption pace of the internet, with a new Anthropic report citing Gallup research that 40% of U.S. employees now use AI at work. While the field…

COVID-19’s grip may have loosened, but its effects on pregnancies linger in data showing higher preterm birth risks for infected mothers. A new analysis from Panalgo, a Norstella company, presented at ICPE 2025, used linked U.S. claims data to match COVID-positive pregnant women against controls. The data revealed a statistically significant increase in preterm deliveries;…

Healthcare is one of the largest sources of “big data,” accounting for upwards of 30% of all data produced globally.1 Early on, the potential benefits of this data for healthcare outcomes were immediately evident. As that promise has begun to materialize, with the advent of AI and machine learning, real signals of improvement in therapeutic…

Bispecific antibodies (BsAbs) are redefining the landscape of therapeutic design, offering dual-target precision that conventional antibodies can’t match. These specially engineered antibodies bind to either two different antigens or two distinct sites on the same antigen. BsAbs form a powerful new class of therapy which has caused excitement among the drug development community due to…

Demand for next-generation GLP-1 drugs is fueling a boom in peptide research, prompting companies like Sai Life Sciences to expand capabilities amid a hot market for obesity and diabetes treatments. “The GLP-1 agonists have exploded the peptide field,” said Maneesh Pingle, Ph.D., executive vice president and head of discovery services at Sai Life Sciences, in…

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…