I recently came across article touting about a “Robot Scientist” Eve that can make informed guesses about how effective different chemical compounds will be at fighting different diseases. Eve use advanced artificial intelligence in combination with innovative data mining and knowledge discovery techniques, to analyze the results of pharmacological experiments that it performs itself.
As we know with the emergence of the human genome, new frontiers in drug discovery process have opened, ameliorating our understanding and identification skills of more ‘molecular targets’ responsible for various diseases.
Currently, when a new drug is sought, pharmacological researchers conduct a blind study of hundreds of thousands of chemical compounds, applying them to an assay for a disease. The results of those tests determine the so-called Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationships (QSARs) that relate the structure of a chemical compound to its pharmacological activity. Exhaustive testing like this is time-consuming, costly and generally has to be repeated each time a new drug is sought.
According to Dr. Dzeroski, Eve is the first computer system capable of originating its own experiments, physically performing them, interpreting the results and then repeating the cycle, resulting in minimizing the need for random testing of chemical compounds.
Unlike most data mining approaches, in which an individual analysis is carried out on a single dataset, such as a spreadsheet, Eve utilizes the techniques that allow knowledge discovery processes, consisting of several analysis steps, to be carried out across multiple sets of complex data.
It has been decided that Eve will initially put to work at the University of Wales to search compounds for treatment of malaria and schistosomiasis, so-called Third World diseases that are the focus of only limited research by commercial drug companies.
No doubt science and technology, if goes hand in hand, can create wonder. Eve can bestow scientists a revolutionary tool to develop effective treatments in a cost and time saving manner, However, the question arises, are we prudent enough to use such technology?
Think about it.
Until next time,