DeepMind Spinoff Isomorphic Labs to Begin Human Trials of AI-Designed Drugs
Original: AI-Designed Drugs by a DeepMind Spinoff Are Headed to Human Trials
Why This Matters
First major test of AlphaFold's ability to create effective medicines for human use
Isomorphic Labs, a Google DeepMind spinoff, will soon begin human clinical trials for drugs designed using AlphaFold AI technology. President Max Jaderberg announced the milestone at WIRED Health, marking a delay from the originally planned 2025 timeline for clinical trials.
Isomorphic Labs, founded in 2021 as a spinoff from Google DeepMind, uses the Nobel Prize-winning AlphaFold platform for drug discovery. The AI system predicts protein structures and molecular interactions crucial for drug development. AlphaFold has predicted structures of 200 million known proteins and is used by over 2 million people in 190 countries. The company developed IsoDDE, a proprietary drug-design engine that more than doubles AlphaFold 3's accuracy. Isomorphic Labs has partnerships with Eli Lilly and Novartis and is developing its own pipeline in oncology and immunology. The clinical trials represent the first real-world test of AI-designed drugs from the platform.