An important application of artificial intelligence involves medical research. Investing in resources in this field, Google’s parent company Alphabet has announced a new firm that will leverage AI to find new medications.
The newly founded company, called “Isomorphic Laboratories,” will be Alphabet’s second AI entity after DeepMind. Importantly, it would reference DeepMind‘s previous work to get a headstart when it begins research.
Although Isomorphic Labs and DeepMind are likely to collaborate more often than not, these are still two separate companies. However, both have Isomorphic Labs Founder Demis Hassabis as the CEO.
In an official post, Hassabis announced the establishment of the new organization and also stated its objective. He said the firm wants to “reimagine the entire drug discovery process from the ground up with an AI-first approach and, ultimately, to model and understand some of the fundamental mechanisms of life.”
While discussing AI’s role in the more general space of biology, Hassabis highlighted the success of DeepMind’s AlphaFold2. A British AI expert reflected on how it solved a 50-year-old protein folding challenge. He stated that Isomorphic Labs plans to further refine AI’s applications in the process of drug discovery.
Moreover, he talked about the possibility of a common structure between biology and information science. He revealed that the possible “isomorphic mapping” between the two disciplines inspired the name of Alphabet’s latest venture.
Furthermore, Hassabis announced that Isomorphic Labs looks forward to collaborating with DeepMind and other pharmaceutical and biomedical firms. According to him, this collaborative effort would allow the company’s AI to accelerate new drug discoveries and, in turn, help the industry formulate new cures.
