AI Forge: Trustworthy AI for Drug and Therapeutics

AI Forge：值得信赖的药物和治疗人工智能

• 批准号: 10068059
• 金额: $ 3.57万
• 依托单位: THE PROTEIN FORGE LTD
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Collaborative R&D
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=10068059
• 关键词: AI; Forge; Trustworthy; Drug; Therapeutics

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already used extensively by a range of industries, including healthcare. However, a lack of understanding of how the hidden internals of these systems operate (in/out of definition), raises concerns about the level of trust we can or should place in each specific tool. Trustworthiness is key, regardless of whether the system is performing a service for an end user (e.g. cancer diagnostics) or as a tool in product creation (e.g. drug development).One of AI's headline successes came in late 2018 when AlphaFold, a tool created by UK's DeepMind, largely solved a problem that has taxed the best biochemists for decades - that of protein folding. In subsequent years, AI has demonstrated that it can not just predict the three-dimensional structure of the thousands of proteins that allow life to function (i.e. "fold" them) but also create new and unique proteins ("inverse fold" them). This should allow new functions beneficial in healthcare and beyond.The Protein Forge is an Oxford-based start-up specialising in protein engineering, and designing novel protein-based vaccines and therapeutics. The opportunities afforded to SMEs, academics and pharmaceutical companies working in this sector by the new AI tools that have been made freely available are enormous. Designing novel proteins to tackle a disease was typically a lengthy and expensive process. Therapeutic development uses one of a small number of naturally occurring proteins, usually an antibody, to bind to some part of a cell or virus. Vaccines use dead organisms or one of the organism's own proteins. AI now offers the opportunity to use entirely new proteins as platforms for treatments against pathogens, tumours and other conditions.Unfortunately, AI currently assists very much towards the start of the drug development pipeline. It is neither tractable nor affordable to test the many hundreds of possible drugs that can now be designed in seconds or minutes using these new methods. It is, therefore, key that we develop trusted tools to assess which of the many suggested by the AI are likely to fail, like most drugs, to pass the rigorous testing before they are cleared for clinical use by the public.This proposal is for a feasibility study bringing together key stakeholders from throughout the drug development process with leading AI experts. It will create methodologies to establish trustworthiness, and form a consortium in which data, skills and the need to develop these tools can be evaluated.

人工智能 (AI) 已广泛应用于包括医疗保健在内的一系列行业。然而，由于缺乏对这些系统隐藏内部运作方式（定义内/定义外）的了解，引发了人们对我们可以或应该对每个特定工具的信任程度的担忧。无论系统是为最终用户提供服务（例如癌症诊断）还是作为产品创建工具（例如药物开发），可信度都是关键。人工智能的重大成功之一出现在 2018 年底，当时创建了 AlphaFold 工具英国 DeepMind 的研究很大程度上解决了数十年来困扰最优秀生物化学家的问题——蛋白质折叠。在随后的几年中，人工智能已经证明，它不仅可以预测允许生命发挥作用的数千种蛋白质的三维结构（即“折叠”它们），而且还可以创造新的和独特的蛋白质（“反向折叠”它们）。这应该会带来有益于医疗保健及其他领域的新功能。Protein Forge 是一家位于牛津的初创公司，专门从事蛋白质工程以及设计新型蛋白质疫苗和疗法。免费提供的新人工智能工具为从事该领域工作的中小企业、学术界和制药公司提供了巨大的机会。设计新的蛋白质来应对疾病通常是一个漫长而昂贵的过程。治疗开发使用少数天然存在的蛋白质之一（通常是抗体）来与细胞或病毒的某些部分结合。疫苗使用死亡的生物体或生物体自身的一种蛋白质。人工智能现在提供了使用全新蛋白质作为治疗病原体、肿瘤和其他疾病的平台的机会。不幸的是，人工智能目前对药物开发管道的启动有很大帮助。现在使用这些新方法可以在几秒钟或几分钟内设计出数百种可能的药物，但测试这些药物既不容易处理，也负担不起。因此，关键是我们开发可信的工具来评估人工智能建议的许多药物中哪些可能像大多数药物一样无法通过严格的测试，然后才能被公众批准临床使用。该提案是为了一项可行性研究，将整个药物开发过程中的主要利益相关者与领先的人工智能专家聚集在一起。它将创建建立可信度的方法，并形成一个联盟，可以在联盟中评估数据、技能和开发这些工具的需求。