Alphabet’s AI-powered drug discovery company, Isomorphic Labs, is preparing to start its first human clinical trials for its AI-designed cancer drugs, with an ultimate goal of “solving all diseases.”
The details:
- The DeepMind spinoff has spent four years developing drugs using AlphaFold 3, an AI system for predicting protein structures and molecular interactions.
- The team secured $600M in fresh funding in April, fueling both in-house drug candidates and major multi-billion dollar partnerships with Novartis and Eli Lilly.
- The company envisions creating a “drug design engine” that could eventually generate treatments on demand to “solve all diseases.”
- Human dosing is expected to begin soon, with oncology as the first clinical focus, and plans to license successful candidates after early trials.
Why it matters: If Isomorphic’s approach delivers, pharma’s previous trial-and-error model could give way to a faster, more precise era where AI can design new treatments that get tested via simulations before entering the lab. “Solving all diseases” is a utopian vision — but at least one Nobel Prize winner agrees that it is in sight.
Source: The Rundown AI
