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Hindustan Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Hindustan Times
Google prepares to test AI designed drugs on people for first time
Google DeepMind's somewhat secretive spinoff, Isomorphic Labs, appears to be moving closer to a significant milestone in the world of drug development. How, you wonder? The company, which launched in 2021 after DeepMind's AlphaFold breakthrough, is preparing for its first human trials of drugs designed with artificial intelligence. Their aim? To speed up the process of drug discovery, cut costs, and improve the odds of success in getting new medicines to patients. How does it work? AlphaFold, the technology at the heart of Isomorphic Labs, made a name for itself by predicting the 3D structure of proteins. This ability has given scientists a clearer view of how proteins interact with other molecules which is essential for designing new drugs. Isomorphic Labs has taken this foundation and built a team that combines AI researchers with pharmaceutical experts. The company's work is focused on diseases like cancer and immunology, areas where new treatments are badly needed. In addition, the company has secured partnerships with major pharmaceutical firms, including Novartis and Eli Lilly. These collaborations are designed to support both existing drug programmes and the development of new, in-house drug candidates. According to president Colin Murdoch, Isomorphic Labs is now close to moving its AI-designed drugs into human clinical trials, as reported by Fortune. Teams in London are now seeing several candidates who've been put through preclinical testing and the next step is to test these drugs in people. The Isomorphic story In April 2025, Isomorphic Labs raised $600 million in a funding round led by Thrive Capital. This funding is being used to expand the company's AI infrastructure and support clinical development. Their goal? To create a drug design system that can identify unmet medical needs, design drug candidates, and move them into clinical trials faster and with a greater chance of success than traditional methods - all using AI! Drug development is known for being expensive and slow, with a low success rate once trials begin. Isomorphic Labs believes its approach can improve efficiency and raise the odds that a drug will work before it even reaches human testing because of AI. The company is also working on its own internal drug design programmes, with the intention of licensing out successful candidates after early-stage trials. Human trials have not yet started, but the company is preparing for this next phase. The outcome of these trials will provide the first real data on whether AI-designed drugs can perform as expected in people, which will be exciting to see. First Published Date: 09 Jul, 18:42 IST
NDTV
5 days ago
- Business
- NDTV
Google Ready To Start Human Trials Of Its AI-Designed Drugs
Google DeepMind's drug discovery company, Isomorphic Labs, is set to launch human trials of its AI-designed drugs. The company is aiming to use cutting-edge AI to design medicines faster, cheaper and more accurately. Colin Murdoch, Isomorphic Labs president and Google DeepMind's chief business officer, confirmed to Fortune that the human trials were set to get underway. "There are people sitting in our office in King's Cross, London, working, and collaborating with AI to design drugs for cancer. That's happening right now," said Mr Murdoch. "The next big milestone is actually going out to clinical trials, starting to put these things into human beings. We're staffing up now. We're getting very close." Isomorphic Labs was born in the wake of DeepMind's revolutionary AlphaFold AI system that predicts protein structures with high level of accuracy. AlphaFold's creators, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, both from DeepMind, shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with David Baker from the University of Washington. "This was the inspiration for Isomorphic Lab. It really demonstrates that we could do something very foundational in AI that could help unlock drug discovery," said Mr Murdoch. Isomorphic Labs Since the beginning of Isomorphic Labs in 2021, it has partnered with major pharmaceutical companies like Novartis and Eli Lilly. The company secured $600 million in funding in April 2025 to accelerate the mission. Alongside supporting existing drug programmes, the company is researching and developing new drugs in fields like oncology and immunology. Currently, pharma companies spend millions and years on a single drug development. With only a 10 per cent success rate in trials, Isomorphic Labs is aiming to use AI to boost the odds and reduce the resources required for the entire process. "We identify an unmet need, and we start our own drug design programs. We develop those, put them into human clinical haven't got that yet, but we're making good progress," said Mr Murdoch. "We're trying to do all these things: speed them up, reduce the cost, but also really improve the chance that we can be successful. One day we hope to be able to say, well, here's a disease, and then click a button and out pops the design for a drug to address that disease. All powered by these amazing AI tools," he added.
Hindustan Times
5 days ago
- Business
- Hindustan Times
Isomorphic Labs' AI designed drugs are about to hit human trials
Isomorphic Labs, a drug discovery company spun out of Google DeepMind, is about to make a historic breakthrough in medicine. The company is gearing up to begin human clinical trials for drugs designed with the help of Artificial Intelligence. If this goes as planned, it will be a significant milestone in pharmaceutical research. Isomorphic Labs prepares to revolutionize medicine with AI-designed drugs entering human trials. DeepMind's revolutionary AlphaFold AI system gave birth to Isomorphic Labs, which can accurately predict the structure of proteins. This AI has become so advanced that it can model how proteins interact with other molecules, such as DNA and drugs. It enables researchers to design medicines quickly and with high precision. According to Colin Murdoch, president of Isomorphic Labs and DeepMind's chief business officer, the company is close to achieving a major milestone by putting AI-designed drugs into human trials. In an interview with Fortune, Murdoch said, 'There are people sitting in our office in London, collaborating with AI to design drugs for cancer right now.' He added, 'The next big milestone is actually going out to clinical trials.' Since the beginning of Isomorphic Labs in 2021, it has partnered with major pharmaceutical companies like Novartis and Eli Lilly. These partnerships helped them to support existing drug programs and to advance their research in oncology and immunology. The company secured $600 million in funding in April 2025 to accelerate the mission. The current drug development process is very expensive and time-consuming, costing millions and with just a 10% chance of success. Isomorphic Labs aims to speed up the discovery process, reduce costs, and improve the success rate. Murdoch envisions a future where researchers can use the power of AI to design a drug with just the click of a button. If successful, Isomorphic Labs could revolutionise how medicines are developed and possibly offer faster cures for a range of diseases. The company's progress marks a significant step toward utilising the full potential of AI in healthcare, making the dream of curing all diseases a possible goal.
Express Tribune
5 days ago
- Business
- Express Tribune
Isomorphic Labs, Google-backed, to launch human trials for AI-designed drugs
Alphabet's drug discovery arm, Isomorphic Labs, is preparing to enter a new chapter in its ambitious efforts to reshape medicine through artificial intelligence, with its first human clinical trials now on the horizon. Colin Murdoch, the company's president and also Google DeepMind's chief business officer, confirmed to Fortune that trials for AI-designed drugs could begin in the near future. 'We're staffing up now. We're getting very close,' he said during an interview in Paris. The London-based firm, spun out of DeepMind in 2021, was established off the back of AlphaFold, the AI system that stunned scientists by predicting protein structures with remarkable accuracy. That success laid the foundation for a broader mission: to use AI to design new drugs faster, cheaper and with a higher chance of clinical success. 'There are people sitting in our office in King's Cross, London, working, and collaborating with AI to design drugs for cancer,' Murdoch said. 'That's happening right now.' The company was born from one of DeepMind's most celebrated breakthroughs: AlphaFold, an AI system capable of predicting protein structures with a high level of accuracy. — FORTUNE (@FortuneMagazine) July 6, 2025 After several years of building infrastructure and refining its approach, Isomorphic is now transitioning from early-stage discovery into clinical development. According to Murdoch, 'The next big milestone is actually going out to clinical trials, starting to put these things into human beings.' AlphaFold's evolution from predicting single protein structures to modelling interactions between proteins, DNA and drug molecules has proven critical to that progress. It has enabled researchers to approach drug design with greater precision, a shift Murdoch believes will help unlock an era of AI-driven breakthroughs in medicine. 'This was the inspiration for Isomorphic Labs,' he said. 'It really demonstrates that we could do something very foundational in AI that could help unlock drug discovery.' Isomorphic Labs is reimagining drug discovery with the power of AI, and we're scaling our ML team to support the rapid growth of our best-in-class AI models. Heading to ICML and want to find out more? Register to connect with some of our ML team at ICML between 13-19 July:… — Isomorphic Labs (@IsomorphicLabs) July 3, 2025 The company's ambitions are matched by growing financial and industry support. In April 2025, Isomorphic raised $600 million in its first-ever external funding round, led by Thrive Capital. That followed major research agreements signed the previous year with pharmaceutical giants Novartis and Eli Lilly. Under those partnerships, Isomorphic contributes to existing drug pipelines while also developing internal candidates in areas such as oncology and immunology. The aim is to license those compounds once early trial phases are complete. 'We identify an unmet need, and we start our own drug design programs,' Murdoch said. 'We develop those, put them into human clinical trials… we haven't got that yet, but we're making good progress.' Traditional drug development remains an expensive and risky process, with costs running into the millions and success rates in early trials often as low as 10%. > Isomorphic Labs is preparing to launch human trials of AI-designed drugs. > Mission: faster, cheaper, more accurate drug discovery using AI. AI will make the world a better place. One day, it might cure every disease and that future is got closer than we think. — AshutoshShrivastava (@ai_for_success) July 7, 2025 Murdoch believes Isomorphic's hybrid model, combining AI with pharma expertise, could radically improve those odds. 'We're trying to do all these things: speed them up, reduce the cost, but also really improve the chance that we can be successful,' he said. Murdoch envisions a future where AI models could generate effective drug designs at the click of a button. 'One day we hope to be able to say — well, here's a disease, and then click a button and out pops the design for a drug to address that disease,' he said. 'All powered by these amazing AI tools.'
Time of India
6 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Google DeepMind is ready to start human trials of AI-designed drugs; company exec says, ‘We're getting very close'
Google DeepMind 's drug discovery arm, Isomorphic Labs, is 'ready" to begin human trials of its AI-designed drugs . In an interview with Fortune, Colin Murdoch , President of Isomorphic Labs and Google DeepMind's Chief Business Officer, said that the company is 'getting very close' to starting human trials of these drugs. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now This development signifies a potential step for Isomorphic Labs after years of work on its AI-assisted drug designing. Isomorphic Labs was established as a separate entity from DeepMind in 2021. Its foundation stems from AlphaFold , a notable AI system developed by DeepMind, recognised for its ability to predict protein structures with considerable accuracy. What Google DeepMind exec said about starting human trials for AI-designed drugs During an interview with Fortune in Paris, Murdoch said: 'There are people sitting in our office in King's Cross, London, working, and collaborating with AI to design drugs for cancer. That's happening right now.' 'The next big milestone is actually going out to clinical trials, starting to put these things into human beings. We're staffing up now. We're getting very close,' he added. Isomorphic Labs, the company that spun out from DeepMind in 2021, originated from AlphaFold, an AI system known for accurately predicting protein structures. Over time, AlphaFold evolved to model interactions between proteins and molecules like DNA and drugs, significantly advancing its utility in drug discovery and accelerating the development of new medicines. Talking about AlphaFold, Murdoch highlighted: 'This was the inspiration for Isomorphic Labs. It really demonstrates that we could do something very foundational in AI that could help unlock drug discovery.' In 2024, Isomorphic Labs partnered with Novartis and Eli Lilly after releasing AlphaFold 3. By April 2025, it had raised $600 million in its first external funding round led by Thrive Capital. These moves support its goal of creating a 'world-class drug design engine' that combines AI and pharma expertise to develop medicines more efficiently. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now Alongside supporting existing drug programs, the company is also developing its candidates in fields like oncology and immunology for future licensing. 'We identify an unmet need, and we start our own drug design programs. We develop those, put them into human clinical trials… we haven't got that yet, but we're making good progress,' Murdoch explained. Currently, pharma companies invest millions in drug development, often with only a 10% success rate in trials. Murdoch aims to use AlphaFold's technology to significantly boost these odds, ideally reaching a point where researchers can be fully confident in a drug's effectiveness before human trials begin. 'We're trying to do all these things: speed them up, reduce the cost, but also really improve the chance that we can be successful. 'One day we hope to be able to say — well, here's a disease, and then click a button and out pops the design for a drug to address that disease. All powered by these amazing AI tools,' Murdoch continued.
