John Edwards, February 3, 2025
Collected at: https://www.informationweek.com/machine-learning-ai/ai-s-key-role-in-the-emerging-bio-revolutionLike the industrial revolution of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, today’s emerging bio revolution is based on a convergence of technologies, including computing, automation, and perhaps most critically, artificial intelligence.
Both artificial intelligence and biotech are exponential technologies, says Mike Bechtel, Deloitte Consulting’s chief futurist, in an email interview. “The convergence of AI and biotech creates a double exponential field,” he states. “Combined AI-fueled biotech has the ability to disrupt the drug discovery process, accelerate clinical trials, and better predict health outcomes for billions of people.”
Multiple Applications
AI is driving the bio revolution, and we’re seeing that impact across several key areas, says Sid Rao, CEO and co-founder of scientific computing services provider Positron Networks. AI is a game-changer, he states via email. “AI is being used to automate the creation of personalized agents for curing diseases.” He points to mRNA vaccines as an example. “When a patient’s cancer cells are sequenced, AI models [can] design the specific mRNA agents to target that patient’s tumor cells,” Rao says. “We’re talking about medicine tailor-made for individuals, made possible by AI.”
Rao notes that AI is also transforming drug discovery. “It’s determining which molecules can act as catalysts for critical biological pathways, identifying potential drug targets, or optimizing clinical trials,” he says. “With AI, we can predict patient responses or even simulate trial outcomes before they ever happen.”
Bechtel observes that AlphaFold, AI software developed by DeepMind, an Alphabet subsidiary, performs predictions of protein structure and “is saving trillions in drug research costs and yielding new breakthroughs with digital twins, allowing advanced protein structure prediction and design prior to physical synthesis.”
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