Until a few years back, AI (Artificial Intelligence) was still a relatively new subject. But not anymore. In fact, the use of new technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) has gradually begun to revolutionize research activities in the industry.
With the passage of time, and major advances in both science and technology, AI has made its way into most fields of science, including biotechnology. Biotechnology is the field of science that uses biological processes, cells, organisms, or cellular components to develop new technologies.
The new products and tools developed by this technology can be used to help in the field of agriculture, medical science, and various other industries. And with the help of AI, research activities in the biotechnology industry seem to have grown in leaps and bounds.
How Can AI Help in The Field of Biotechnology?
Artificial intelligence has been making its way into the biotech industry slowly but steadily. Given AI’s capability, it has been noticed that it can significantly reduce both the cost and time involved in manufacturing drugs and other products.
Without AI in the past, the biotech industry spent a good amount of time identifying a potential disease target and after that, testing whether a candidate is capable of hitting that target. This increased the cost and was also time-consuming. But with the use of AI, the drug design timeframe can be brought down to a minimum of one year from four to five years. This will eventually help reduce costs too.
Another helpful use of AI in the biotechnology industry is the analyzation of data. Without a doubt, the biotech companies have extensive data to analyze day in and day out. This is where AI can help because machines can quickly recognize and understand patterns in a way that humans cannot.
Solutions driven by AI can help biotech companies to analyze a lot of data quickly. They can identify the appropriate patient population, predict outcomes in a virtual patient in certain cases, and eliminate or reduce the need for some research or studies. To understand how AI can help the biotech industry in various other ways, here are some of the many uses of AI in the biotech industry.
What exactly is biotechnology mixed with Informatics?
The alliance between IT and biotechnology is called bio-informatics, as explained by a structural biotechnology professor at Cambridge University. It requires a proper set of skills and knowledge to work on bioinformatics to operate the tools and the software.
Over the past few years, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have started entering the biotech and pharma industry.
With time we can see the partnership between big pharma and technology and then their experimentation with Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for drug discovery and other purposes. Positive results have already started coming with this joint venture between them.
Collaborations and Partnerships
Many collaborations and partnerships were established over the last few years between biotech companies and AI companies, mainly start-ups to help the biotech companies devise new methods to incorporate AI in their field of work and make use of the old methods for the betterment of the industry and the world.
For example, global leader Glaxo GSK recently collaborated with companies like Exscientia, a UK-based company with expertise in machine-learning, Cloud Pharmaceuticals, an AI-driven drug design, and development company, and Insilico Medicine, an American company with expertise in AI-led drug discovery.
These partnerships were struck to use AI for the discovery and production of new small-molecule drugs. Other companies like Roche’s RHHBY pharma wing, Genentech also struck a research partnership with GNS Healthcare. This partnership was done to control cancer drug development with GNS Healthcare’s REFS causal machine learning and simulation AI platform. Many other companies like J&J, Novartis NVS, etc. have been following the same path.
Companies like BenevolentBiIO use AI to pore over large existing databases of scientific data.
Companies like AIcure, AlphaGoZero, SOPHia Genetics have created unbelievable products using Artificial Intelligence.
The above are just a few examples of biotechnology with Artificial Intelligence. There are much more in the list and many more are yet to come.
Thus, AI is going to make a mark in the biotech industry in the coming years and is likely to be there forever with it’s a markable presence. New AI biotech companies are still being formed and for good reasons. The future of the biotech industry has been stabilized for now.
