Drugs cost too much, for patients, for insurers and even for pharmaceutical companies that design and sell them. A new drug can cost more than a billion dollars to bring to market, and that cost has to be borne by someone. New drugs increasingly target more specialized health problems, and with it, sub-groups of patients suffering from particular complaints. This leads to better treatments using more targeted therapies but requires more drugs to cover all ailments.
Increasingly, artificial intelligence (AI) is being used to improve drug discovery and development, delivering better drugs that are faster and cheaper to design. Drug discovery, the act of finding a plausible candidate drug, and drug development, showing that it is safe and effective, are arguably two of the most complex ventures in modern science, often taking 10 years from concept to clinic.
Exscentia are the first company to automate drug design, surpassing conventional human endeavour. Their AI driven systems actively learn best practice from vast repositories of discovery data and are further enhanced with knowledge acquired from seasoned drug hunters. As at 30th June 2016, Frontier IP Group Plc (LON:FIPP) have a 5% holding in Exscientia.