AI is reinventing medicines

Yes, of course, AI is scary. But there is one area where this technology is a dream: biochemistry. Researchers have just presented new therapeutic antibodies, designed entirely by AI, to target specific bacteria or viruses. A feat unimaginable a few years ago.

Hervé Poirier, editor-in-chief of the scientific magazine Epsiloon, tells us today of a feat: for the first time, artificial intelligence has succeeded in creating new antibodies.

franceinfo: This feat opens the way to new drugs? Explain to us…

Hervé Poirier: Antibodies are our natural defenses. These molecules are naturally produced by our immune system, after exposure to a bacteria or a virus: they then allow it to detect and neutralize these pathogens.

These immune proteins can also be used for vaccines or drugs, but normally such laboratory creations are an extremely time-consuming and expensive process – the therapeutic antibody market is worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Thanks to the new power of AI, a team of American biochemists has just suddenly presented thousands of new antibodies, supposed to specifically target the Covid-19 virus, the flu or certain cancers. Laboratory tests showed that only one molecule in 100 worked as hoped, but that still leaves dozens of potential new therapeutic molecules. It’s totally stunning…

How was this feat achieved?

The algorithm is similar to those which allow the production of these ultra-realistic images that we have seen flourishing in recent months on the networks. It was specifically trained on thousands of real molecules, to guess the geometric shape a protein takes based on its chemical formula.

Because this is the key point for an antibody: by presenting a shape that perfectly complements that of part of a virus or a bacteria, it succeeds in sticking to it and neutralizing it. The problem is that it is very difficult to predict, through theoretical calculation, the shape of a given molecule. This AI gets there. Better still, she can find a chemical formula corresponding to the desired form. Really bluffant.

With, therefore, plenty of possible therapeutic applications?

For now, this is a proof of principle. But yes: these new AIs promise to reinvent the way of producing new drugs. Beyond antibodies, they have recently made it possible to discover new antibiotics, new enzymes, new psychoactive molecules.

The field is booming. Let’s admit it: these machines capable of producing false, ultra-realistic images on an assembly line are a little scary. But in biochemistry, this technology is a dream.