It’s called BPM 31510. It’s one of many cancer drugs being developed in Massachusetts, but it’s different. BPM 31510 may be the first drug
candidate that did not come from a scientist running experiments based
on a hypothesis. Instead, it came from artificial intelligence.
They’re processing tissue, urine and blood samples, both from thousands
of cancer patients and from thousands of healthy patients, many samples
that were taken over long periods of time. Narain says the machines are
churning out huge amounts of valuable raw data. What makes Berg different is
that it built an artificial intelligence system. The complex
computational platform processes trillions of data points to identify
molecules that may be effective drugs.
“So we’re not dismissing the
scientific process,” Narain said. “We’re just kind of putting one step
ahead of it. Instead of the human brain deciphering or proposing those
hypotheses, we’re allowing the data from the patient biology to generate
those hypotheses.”
At least so far, trying something new seems to be working. Berg’s
computational tools have identified drug candidates for different
cancers and for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases.They’ve done
so in a relatively short amount of time.“You have all this genomic data plus all these other molecular
measurements,” Butte said. “All this computational work to figure out
what’s causing what. And if that works, they’re going to be the first to
come up with the first data-driven drugs.”
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