UK AI project aims to boost drug discovery

A £1 million UK project is hoping to use artificial intelligence (AI) to help scientists advance drug discovery.

Life science groups, Optibrium, Intellegens, and Medicines Discovery Catapult have secured the funding from Innovate UK to advance the project.

The companies will work together over the next two years, using AI to learn from complex data sets and help scientists design and test potential new drugs.

In particular, the project will use deep learning methods to create a drug discovery platform that can better predict the absorption, distribution, metabolism, excretion and toxicity (ADMET) of new drug candidates. The companies hope that from this platform, they can better understand how a drug interacts with the body and improve the efficiency and productivity of drug discovery.

By building on Optibrium’s existing software (StarDrop) and Intellegens’ deep learning toolkit (Alchemite), the project will develop AI methods to use across ADMET. Labelled as DeepADMET technology, the companies hope it will be able to improve the scope and reliability of drug desing parameters that are currently inaccessible or unavailable.  

Matthew Segall, chief executive officer of Optibrium, said: “We are delighted to lead this project in collaboration with Medicines Discovery Catapult and Intellegens. We will apply cutting edge deep learning methods and new data to address important challenges in drug optimisation. The funding from Innovate UK is important validation of our project team’s expertise and the impact it will have on the industry’s efficiency and productivity.”

Professor John Overington, chief informatics officer of the Medicines Discovery Catapult, stated: “At Medicines Discovery Catapult we apply innovation, working alongside UK SMEs to drive the development and adoption of new approaches for the discovery and early development of new medicines. This collaborative R&D activity will allow us to do just that and the grant from Innovate UK represents an important milestone for the advancement of informatics and data science.”

Ben Pellegrini, chief executive officer of Intellegens, added: “Intellegens is extremely excited to be part of this collaboration and looks forward to applying our novel deep learning techniques to help build a next generation platform to improve the drug discovery process.”