Steve Jobs once said that “the biggest innovations of the twenty-first century will be the intersection of biology and technology,” and that “a new era is beginning” that he likened to the digital age that he spent most of his life working in. Numerous examples keep popping up that support his claims. You can now take someone’s DNA, the recipe for their existence, and hand it over to them on a thumb drive in digital form. We have even created new DNA letters and expanded the genetic alphabet. We are using software programs to create synthetic organisms for the chemical industry that remove reliance on petroleum. We have the ability to edit genes at the germline and potentially remove hereditary diseases. And we are now able to start modelling how things actually work in nature. One exciting area of work where biology meets technology is computational chemistry.
Exscientia is at the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI)-driven drug discovery and design. Frontier IP Group plc (LON:FIPP) as a 5% holding in Exscientia as of 30th June 2016.