Google Cloud’s new AI-tools to help accelerate drug discovery

NEW DELHI: Google Cloud on Wednesday announced two new AI-powered life sciences solutions to accelerate drug discovery and precision medicine for biotech companies, pharmaceutical firms, and public sector organisations.

The tools, target and lead identification suite will help researchers better identify the function of amino acids and predict the structure of proteins; and the multiomics suite will accelerate the discovery and interpretation of genomic data, helping companies design precision treatments, the company said in a statement.

"We've long been involved with creating new tools for understanding and working with the code of life, like high performance computing for genomic analytics, and artificial intelligence that can predict three-dimensional models of proteins," said Shweta Maniar, global director, Life Sciences Strategy and Solutions, Google Cloud, in the statement.

"These new solutions launching today can transform life sciences organisations by accelerating drug discovery and bringing therapeutics to market faster. When patients are waiting for that life-saving treatment in cancer care or that quality-of-life medicine for migraine headaches, this faster time-to-market can have an incredibly positive impact on lives," she added.

The target and lead identification suite will enable biopharma companies to bring therapeutics to market faster by enabling more efficient in-silico drug design. Its target identification will help companies quickly predict antibody structures, assess the structure and function of amino acid mutagenesis, and accelerate de novo protein design.

Multinational pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, and biotech companies like Cerevel have adopted the Target and Lead Identification Suite, the company said.

The multiomics suite advances precision medicine care by transforming multiomics data into insights to advance scientific discoveries.

Organisations can use this solution to streamline and accelerate analysis of genomic data, design clinical genomics, accelerate personalised medicine, and interpret genomic data to unlock new discoveries.

The solution also provides structure and processes for researchers and data scientists to collaborate, saving time on developing new paths, algorithms, or methods.

Multiomics suite is also cloud agnostic. It allows organisations to leverage existing investments in multiomics in a simplified environment.