Artificial intelligence in drug development.

Journal: Nature medicine
Published Date: Jan 20, 2025

Abstract

Drug development is a complex and time-consuming endeavor that traditionally relies on the experience of drug developers and trial-and-error experimentation. The advent of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, particularly emerging large language models and generative AI, is poised to redefine this paradigm. The integration of AI-driven methodologies into the drug development pipeline has already heralded subtle yet meaningful enhancements in both the efficiency and effectiveness of this process. Here we present an overview of recent advancements in AI applications across the entire drug development workflow, encompassing the identification of disease targets, drug discovery, preclinical and clinical studies, and post-market surveillance. Lastly, we critically examine the prevailing challenges to highlight promising future research directions in AI-augmented drug development.

Authors

  • Kang Zhang
    Xifeng District People's Hospital, Qingyang, China.
  • Xin Yang
    Department of Oral Maxillofacial-Head Neck Oncology, Ninth People's Hospital, College of Stomatology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, National Clinical Research Center for Oral Diseases, Shanghai Key Laboratory of Stomatology & Shanghai Research Institute of Stomatology, Shanghai, China.
  • Yifei Wang
    Department of Dermatology, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China.
  • Yunfang Yu
    Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Malignant Tumor Epigenetics and Gene Regulation, Guangdong-Hong Kong Joint Laboratory for RNA Medicine, Department of Medical Oncology, Breast Tumor Centre, Phase I Clinical Trial Centre, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China; Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Cancer Pathogenesis and Precision Diagnosis and Treatment, Joint Big Data Laboratory, Department of Medical Oncology, Shenshan Medical Center, Memorial Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Shanwei, China; Institute for AI in Medicine and faculty of Medicine, Macau University of Science and Technology, Taipa, Macao, China; Department of Breast Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China.
  • Niu Huang
    Tsinghua Institute of Multidisciplinary Biomedical Research, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China102206, China.
  • Gen Li
    Department of Orthopedics, Shanghai Tenth People's Hospital, Tongji University, School of Medicine, Shanghai, 200072, P.R.China.
  • Xiaokun Li
    Postdoctoral Program of Heilongjiang Hengxun Technology Co., Ltd., Harbin 150090, China. xiaokun_li_hx_hlju@163.com.
  • Joseph C Wu
  • Shengyong Yang
    State Key Laboratory of Biotherapy and Cancer Center, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China.

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