10.08.

2020 AI can speed up the search for new treatments – here's how | World Econom c Forum

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How AI can accelerate the search for zorlu,inatçı

treatments for emerging and intractable
diseases

AI can save time and money in the search for treatments for emerging diseases, Image: BenevolentAI
including COVID-19.

05 Aug 2020

Joanna Shields
Chief Executive Officer, BenevolentAI

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been a powerful tool in the search for COVID-19
treatments.

In January, BenevolentAI identified a drug for rheumatoid arthritis as a potential

therapy for the novel coronavirus. It’s now being tested in large-scale trials
around the world.

AI models and algorithms can save time and money in the search for potential
drug leads for emerging diseases.

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10.08.2020 AI can speed up the search for new treatments – here's how | World Econom c Forum

The sudden appearance and rapid spread of COVID-19 took governments and society by
toz atmak,pratik yapmak müdahale hızlandırmak
surprise. As they dusted off pandemic response plans and geared up to fight the virus, it
became clear that we needed to turbo-charge R&D efforts and find better ways to hunt down
umut veren
promising treatments for emerging diseases.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has proven a powerful tool in this fight.

becermek,başarmak
In a pandemic, speed is of the essence. Although scientists managed to sequence the genetic
code of the new coronavirus and produce diagnostic tests in record time, developing drugs
and vaccines against the virus remains a long haul.
mantık yoluyla
AI has the power to accelerate the process by reasoning across all available biomedical data
and information in a systematic search for existing approved medicines – a vital step in
helping patients while the world waits for a vaccine.
verinin işlenmesi
Machines excel in handling data in fast-changing circumstances, which means machine
kullanmak
learning systems can be harnessed to work as tireless and unbiased super-researchers.
özel
This is not just theory. In late January, using its proprietary platform of AI models and
algorithms to search through the scientific literature, researchers at BenevolentAI in London
günde bir kez
identified an established, once-daily arthritis pill as a potential treatment for COVID-19. The
findings were published in two papers in The Lancet and The Lancet Infectious Diseases, in
line with our commitment under the Wellcome Trust pledge to share our coronavirus-related
vaad etmek
research rapidly and openly.

BenevolentAI's COVID-19 timeline Image: BenevolentAI

The discovery followed a computer-driven hunt for drug candidates with both antiviral and
anti-inflammatory properties, since in severe cases of COVID-19 it is the body’s overactive
immune response that can cause significant and sometimes fatal damage.

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10.08.2020 AI can speed up the search for new treatments – here's how | World Econom c Forum

The drug, baricitinib, is currently marketed by Eli Lilly to treat rheumatoid arthritis. Now, thanks
to AI, it is being tested against COVID-19 in a major randomised-controlled trial in
collaboration with the U.S. National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in
combination with remdesivir, an antiviral drug from Gilead Sciences that recently won
başlamak
emergency-use approval for COVID-19. Eli Lilly has now commenced its own independent trial
of baricitinib as a therapy for COVID-19 in South America, Europe and Asia.

The BenevolentAI knowledge graph found that baricitinib might help treat Image: BenevolentAI
COVID-19.

The system used to identify baricitinib was not actually set up to find new uses of existing
medicines, but rather to discover and develop new drugs – a sign of the potential for AI to
uncover novel insights and relationships across an unlimited number of biological entities. In a
crisis like COVID-19, it clearly makes sense to hunt through already approved drugs that can
be ready for large-scale clinical trials until vaccines are approved and readily available in the
global supply chain.

The long-term promise of AI goes far beyond COVID-19.

BenevolentAI’s vision is to dramatically improve pharmaceutical R&D productivity across the
board and to expand the drug discovery universe by making predictions in novel areas of
biology. Currently, around half of late-stage clinical trials fail due to ineffective drug targets,
resulting in only 15% of drugs advancing from mid-stage Phase 2 testing to approval.

Using a “knowledge graph” composed of chemical, biological and medical research and
information, the company’s AI machine learning models and algorithms can identify potential
drug leads currently unknown in medical science and far faster than humans. While such
systems will never replace scientists and clinicians, they can save both time and money. And
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10.08.2020 AI can speed up the search for new treatments – here's how | World Econom c Forum
benimsenen
the agnostic approach adopted by machine learning means such platforms can generate
gözden kaçırmak
leads that may have been overlooked by traditional research.
çaba
The endeavour has already led to an in-house project on amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS),
ulcerative colitis, atopic dermatitis and programmes with partners on progressive kidney and
lung diseases, as well as hard-to-treat cancers like glioblastoma.

The ability of machines to solve complex biological puzzles more rapidly than human experts
has prompted increased investment in AI drug discovery by a growing number of large
pharmaceutical companies.

And AI is also being harnessed in other areas of medicine, such as the analysis of medical
kapsamak
images. This encompasses long-standing work on cancer scans and much more recent efforts
to use computer power to identify COVID-19 from chest X-rays, including the open-access
COVID-Net neural network.

HEALTH AND HEALTHCARE

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Clearly, COVID-19 has been a wake-up call for the world. It seems this outbreak may be part
of an increasingly frequent pattern of epidemics, fuelled by our hyper-connected modern
brace-destek
world. As a result, medical experts are braced for more previously unknown “Disease X”
threats in the years ahead as viruses jump from animals to humans and jet around the world.

Technology has helped create a world in which pathogens like COVID-19, SARS and Zika can
spread. But technology, in the form of AI, can also provide us with the weapons to fight back.

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Written by

Joanna Shields, Chief Executive Officer, BenevolentAI

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

The World Economic Forum COVID Action Platform

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