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posted by Fnord666 on Friday May 05 2017, @08:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the what-can't-AI-do? dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

The next blockbuster drug could be developed with help from machine-learning techniques that are rapidly spreading from AI research to pharmacology labs.

Deep Genomics was founded by Brendan Frey, a professor at the University of Toronto who specializes in both machine learning and genomic medicine. His company uses deep learning, or very large neural networks, to analyze genomic data. Identifying one or more genes responsible for a disease can help researchers develop a drug that addresses the behavior of the faulty genes.

Until now the company has focused on scouring the genome for hard-to-detect mutations that might have a causal relationship with a particular disease. The company will focus, at first, on early-stage development of drugs for Mendelian disorders, inherited diseases that result from a single genetic mutation. These diseases are estimated to affect 350 million people worldwide.

The rush to apply AI techniques to medicine and drug development is partly driven by the emergence of powerful new algorithms, but also by cost-effective new ways of sequencing whole genomes, the entire readout of a person's DNA. "There's an opening of a new era of data-rich, information-based medicine," Frey says. "There's a lot of different kinds of data you can obtain. And the best technology we have for dealing with large amounts of data is machine learning and artificial intelligence."

Deep learning has emerged in recent years as a very powerful way to find abstract patterns using large amounts of training data. It has proved especially valuable for speech recognition and for classification (see "10 Breakthrough Technologies 2013: Deep Learning"). The approach is now rapidly finding new uses in fields including medicine, where it offers a way to spot signs of disease in medical images and has shown potential for predicting disease from patient records.

Frey, who trained as a computer scientist and studied at the University of Toronto under Geoffrey Hinton, a key figure in the development of deep learning, says Deep Genomics will seek to partner with a pharma company on drug development. But he adds that the company offers key expertise.

"There's going to be this really massive shake-up of pharmaceuticals," Frey says. "In five years or so, the pharmaceutical companies that are going to be successful are going to have a culture of using these AI tools."

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 1) by Gault.Drakkor on Friday May 05 2017, @09:38PM (2 children)

    by Gault.Drakkor (1079) on Friday May 05 2017, @09:38PM (#505169)

    Maybe not vapor-product but most likely vapor-results. Who knows? Maybe they actually have something.

    I read these articles recently: (The second is linked early in the pipeline article.)
    pipeline:software-eats-the-world-but-biology-eats-it [sciencemag.org]
    four-decades-hacking-biotech-yet-biology-still-consumes-everything [lifescivc.com]

    From reading those articles they are trying to create and use a silver bullet on a bullet resistant target.

  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday May 05 2017, @11:19PM (1 child)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 05 2017, @11:19PM (#505211) Journal

    I really doubt that they have something ... yet.

    Research companies often (always) speculate on what they might be able to do with a bit more work. If he already had something, it would be in trials.

    --
    Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday May 06 2017, @12:37AM

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday May 06 2017, @12:37AM (#505236) Homepage

      Hell yeah. Even though I'm employed with Boston Dynamics, I started working for them after they were bought out and so missed out on a lot of that fun and exhilarating "garage-style" startup experience, so while being on vacation I applied and interviewed for a tech startup for shits and giggles. Their idea is not revolutionary but is a niche that could have viable had they been able to meet their deadline (note: they haven't, and I doubt they will until at least the ass-end of this year, but that's not necessarily a bad thing in the startup world).

      Exact same shit. Get a few VC's, cobble together something that works but not well enough, and hope to get bought out. You can tell when you go in for an interview and it comes off as viral marketing more than it does an actual two-way interview. I had before worked for a company that operated by a similar principle but by then they were already in the "dump" rather than "pump" phase, and I was more undertaker than maintenance. It works when you're a W-2 employee with no family and enjoy living off of unemployment every now and then, not so much when you have a family or actual shit to worry about.

      That being said, I'd like to return to my former life as a corporate whore. The inflexible bureaucracy is annoying, and progress is ploddingly slow, but expectations are low and life outside of work is quite enjoyable.