AI is revolutionizing drug discovery by accelerating testing and sifting through petabytes of data for links between diseases

In December, The Conversation hosted a webinar about the revolutionary role of AI in drug discovery and development.

Science and Technology Editor Eric Smalley interviewed Jeffrey Skolnick, a distinguished computational systems biology scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Benjamin P. Brown, assistant professor of pharmacology at Vanderbilt University.

Skolnick has developed AI-based approaches to predict protein structure and function, which can aid in drug development and finding off-label uses of existing drugs. Brown’s lab is working to develop new computer models that will make drug discovery faster and more reliable. Below you will find a shortened and edited version of the interview.

Let’s start with the big picture. How is AI changing biomedical research and drug development and what potential are we talking about?

Skolnick: The potential is potentially very great. One of the frustrating things about drug discovery is that the people who do it…