AI-based language models powering drug discovery and development.

Journal: Drug discovery today
Published Date: Jun 30, 2021

Abstract

The discovery and development of new medicines is expensive, time-consuming, and often inefficient, with many failures along the way. Powered by artificial intelligence (AI), language models (LMs) have changed the landscape of natural language processing (NLP), offering possibilities to transform treatment development more effectively. Here, we summarize advances in AI-powered LMs and their potential to aid drug discovery and development. We highlight opportunities for AI-powered LMs in target identification, clinical design, regulatory decision-making, and pharmacovigilance. We specifically emphasize the potential role of AI-powered LMs for developing new treatments for Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) strategies, including drug repurposing, which can be extrapolated to other infectious diseases that have the potential to cause pandemics. Finally, we set out the remaining challenges and propose possible solutions for improvement.

Authors

  • Zhichao Liu
    a Division of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics , National Center for Toxicological Research, U.S. Food and Drug Administration , Jefferson , AR , USA.
  • Ruth A Roberts
    National Center for Toxicological Research, US Food and Drug Administration, Jefferson, AR 72079, USA; ApconiX, BioHub at Alderley Park, Alderley Edge SK10 4TG, UK; University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK.
  • Madhu Lal-Nag
    Office of Translational Sciences, Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, US FDA, Silver Spring, MD 20993, USA.
  • Xi Chen
    Department of Critical care medicine, Shenzhen Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangdong, Shenzhen, China.
  • Ruili Huang
    National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) , National Institutes of Health , 9800 Medical Center Drive , Rockville , Maryland 20850 , United States.
  • Weida Tong
    National Center for Toxicological Research, Division of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Jefferson, AR, United States.

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