Latest news with #ColinMurdoch
Fast Company
7 hours ago
- Health
- Fast Company
Google's AI drug company says human trials are ‘very close'
Isomorphic Labs, the AI -powered drug company spun out of Google's DeepMind, just announced that it's 'getting ready' to begin human clinical trials of drugs designed by AI. In an interview with Fortune on July 6, Colin Murdoch, Isomorphic Labs' president and Google DeepMind's chief business officer, shared that the company is currently gearing up to start human trials. This milestone will mark the first time that Google DeepMind's breakthrough AI drug discovery system, AlphaFold3, will be put into practice on actual patients. The news comes as tech companies and research institutions are rolling out new applications for AI in medicine at a frantic pace. Early this month, Microsoft released a report claiming that its new AI Diagnostic Orchestrator is around four times more accurate than a human physician when it comes to diagnosing complex issues. On the same day, researchers at Northwestern Medicine published a study on a new AI-powered device that may revolutionize cancer screening. Now, here's what to know about Isomorphic Labs' next major step in AI-powered drug development: What is Isomorphic Labs? Isomorphic Labs is a London-based drug developer that's owned and operated by Alphabet Inc. The company was founded in 2021 as an offshoot from DeepMind, Google's multidisciplinary AI research arm. In multiple interviews, Isomorphic Labs executives have explained the company's intimidating goal: to eventually 'solve all diseases' using AI. 'This isn't about developing therapeutics for a particular indication or a particular target,' Max Jaderberg, chief AI officer at Isomorphic Labs, explained in an interview this April. 'It's really thinking about, how do we create a really general drug design engine with AI—something that we can apply to not just a single target, or even a single modality, but we can apply this again and again across any different disease area?' What is AlphaFold AI? The key unlock driving Isomorphic Labs' expansive goal is its trailblazing AlphaFold AI system, a discovery that earned a Nobel Prize in chemistry last October. The most recent iteration of the technology, AlphaFold3, can predict proteins' complex structures, as well as modeling how certain proteins might interact with other molecules, like DNA and drugs. These insights can essentially give researchers a supercharged headstart on drug development. DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis explained the tech in a conference call last May: 'You imagine that AlphaFold gives you the structure of a protein you're interested in, in a particular disease, lets say, and with these new capabilities we can now design a compound or ligand (a ' chemical messenger ') that will bind to a specific place . . . on the surface of the protein, once you understand the structure of it, and we can predict how strong the binding affinity will be,' Hassabis said. 'It's a critical step if you want to design drugs.' Currently, AlphaFold serves as an AI-powered first step in drug development. After the AlphaFold3 system models a potential interaction, researchers then need to use other AI models to predict factors like toxicity and interactions with other drugs. Then, to actually commercialize a new drug, it needs to be tested in wet lab experiments, followed by human clinical trials. What's happening now? Now, that human clinical trial step is finally in sight. According to Murdoch, Isomorphic Labs' team is currently 'collaborating with AI to design drugs for cancer,' and is already 'staffing up' for its first human clinical trials. 'One day we hope to be able to say—well, here's a disease, and then click a button and out pops the design for a drug to address that disease, all powered by these amazing AI tools,' Murdoch told Fortune.
NDTV
10 hours ago
- Business
- NDTV
Google Ready To Start Human Trials Of Its AI-Designed Drugs
Google DeepMind's drug discovery company, Isomorphic Labs, is set to launch human trials of its AI-designed drugs. The company is aiming to use cutting-edge AI to design medicines faster, cheaper and more accurately. Colin Murdoch, Isomorphic Labs president and Google DeepMind's chief business officer, confirmed to Fortune that the human trials were set to get underway. "There are people sitting in our office in King's Cross, London, working, and collaborating with AI to design drugs for cancer. That's happening right now," said Mr Murdoch. "The next big milestone is actually going out to clinical trials, starting to put these things into human beings. We're staffing up now. We're getting very close." Isomorphic Labs was born in the wake of DeepMind's revolutionary AlphaFold AI system that predicts protein structures with high level of accuracy. AlphaFold's creators, Demis Hassabis and John Jumper, both from DeepMind, shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with David Baker from the University of Washington. "This was the inspiration for Isomorphic Lab. It really demonstrates that we could do something very foundational in AI that could help unlock drug discovery," said Mr Murdoch. Isomorphic Labs Since the beginning of Isomorphic Labs in 2021, it has partnered with major pharmaceutical companies like Novartis and Eli Lilly. The company secured $600 million in funding in April 2025 to accelerate the mission. Alongside supporting existing drug programmes, the company is researching and developing new drugs in fields like oncology and immunology. Currently, pharma companies spend millions and years on a single drug development. With only a 10 per cent success rate in trials, Isomorphic Labs is aiming to use AI to boost the odds and reduce the resources required for the entire process. "We identify an unmet need, and we start our own drug design programs. We develop those, put them into human clinical haven't got that yet, but we're making good progress," said Mr Murdoch. "We're trying to do all these things: speed them up, reduce the cost, but also really improve the chance that we can be successful. One day we hope to be able to say, well, here's a disease, and then click a button and out pops the design for a drug to address that disease. All powered by these amazing AI tools," he added.
Hindustan Times
15 hours ago
- Business
- Hindustan Times
Isomorphic Labs' AI designed drugs are about to hit human trials
Isomorphic Labs, a drug discovery company spun out of Google DeepMind, is about to make a historic breakthrough in medicine. The company is gearing up to begin human clinical trials for drugs designed with the help of Artificial Intelligence. If this goes as planned, it will be a significant milestone in pharmaceutical research. Isomorphic Labs prepares to revolutionize medicine with AI-designed drugs entering human trials. DeepMind's revolutionary AlphaFold AI system gave birth to Isomorphic Labs, which can accurately predict the structure of proteins. This AI has become so advanced that it can model how proteins interact with other molecules, such as DNA and drugs. It enables researchers to design medicines quickly and with high precision. According to Colin Murdoch, president of Isomorphic Labs and DeepMind's chief business officer, the company is close to achieving a major milestone by putting AI-designed drugs into human trials. In an interview with Fortune, Murdoch said, 'There are people sitting in our office in London, collaborating with AI to design drugs for cancer right now.' He added, 'The next big milestone is actually going out to clinical trials.' Since the beginning of Isomorphic Labs in 2021, it has partnered with major pharmaceutical companies like Novartis and Eli Lilly. These partnerships helped them to support existing drug programs and to advance their research in oncology and immunology. The company secured $600 million in funding in April 2025 to accelerate the mission. The current drug development process is very expensive and time-consuming, costing millions and with just a 10% chance of success. Isomorphic Labs aims to speed up the discovery process, reduce costs, and improve the success rate. Murdoch envisions a future where researchers can use the power of AI to design a drug with just the click of a button. If successful, Isomorphic Labs could revolutionise how medicines are developed and possibly offer faster cures for a range of diseases. The company's progress marks a significant step toward utilising the full potential of AI in healthcare, making the dream of curing all diseases a possible goal.
Express Tribune
17 hours ago
- Business
- Express Tribune
Isomorphic Labs, Google-backed, to launch human trials for AI-designed drugs
Alphabet's drug discovery arm, Isomorphic Labs, is preparing to enter a new chapter in its ambitious efforts to reshape medicine through artificial intelligence, with its first human clinical trials now on the horizon. Colin Murdoch, the company's president and also Google DeepMind's chief business officer, confirmed to Fortune that trials for AI-designed drugs could begin in the near future. 'We're staffing up now. We're getting very close,' he said during an interview in Paris. The London-based firm, spun out of DeepMind in 2021, was established off the back of AlphaFold, the AI system that stunned scientists by predicting protein structures with remarkable accuracy. That success laid the foundation for a broader mission: to use AI to design new drugs faster, cheaper and with a higher chance of clinical success. 'There are people sitting in our office in King's Cross, London, working, and collaborating with AI to design drugs for cancer,' Murdoch said. 'That's happening right now.' The company was born from one of DeepMind's most celebrated breakthroughs: AlphaFold, an AI system capable of predicting protein structures with a high level of accuracy. — FORTUNE (@FortuneMagazine) July 6, 2025 After several years of building infrastructure and refining its approach, Isomorphic is now transitioning from early-stage discovery into clinical development. According to Murdoch, 'The next big milestone is actually going out to clinical trials, starting to put these things into human beings.' AlphaFold's evolution from predicting single protein structures to modelling interactions between proteins, DNA and drug molecules has proven critical to that progress. It has enabled researchers to approach drug design with greater precision, a shift Murdoch believes will help unlock an era of AI-driven breakthroughs in medicine. 'This was the inspiration for Isomorphic Labs,' he said. 'It really demonstrates that we could do something very foundational in AI that could help unlock drug discovery.' Isomorphic Labs is reimagining drug discovery with the power of AI, and we're scaling our ML team to support the rapid growth of our best-in-class AI models. Heading to ICML and want to find out more? Register to connect with some of our ML team at ICML between 13-19 July:… — Isomorphic Labs (@IsomorphicLabs) July 3, 2025 The company's ambitions are matched by growing financial and industry support. In April 2025, Isomorphic raised $600 million in its first-ever external funding round, led by Thrive Capital. That followed major research agreements signed the previous year with pharmaceutical giants Novartis and Eli Lilly. Under those partnerships, Isomorphic contributes to existing drug pipelines while also developing internal candidates in areas such as oncology and immunology. The aim is to license those compounds once early trial phases are complete. 'We identify an unmet need, and we start our own drug design programs,' Murdoch said. 'We develop those, put them into human clinical trials… we haven't got that yet, but we're making good progress.' Traditional drug development remains an expensive and risky process, with costs running into the millions and success rates in early trials often as low as 10%. > Isomorphic Labs is preparing to launch human trials of AI-designed drugs. > Mission: faster, cheaper, more accurate drug discovery using AI. AI will make the world a better place. One day, it might cure every disease and that future is got closer than we think. — AshutoshShrivastava (@ai_for_success) July 7, 2025 Murdoch believes Isomorphic's hybrid model, combining AI with pharma expertise, could radically improve those odds. 'We're trying to do all these things: speed them up, reduce the cost, but also really improve the chance that we can be successful,' he said. Murdoch envisions a future where AI models could generate effective drug designs at the click of a button. 'One day we hope to be able to say — well, here's a disease, and then click a button and out pops the design for a drug to address that disease,' he said. 'All powered by these amazing AI tools.'
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Google DeepMind has grand ambitions to ‘cure all diseases' with AI. Now, it's gearing up for its first human trials
Alphabet's Isomorphic Labs is preparing to launch human trials of AI-designed drugs, its president, Colin Murdoch, told Fortune. Born from DeepMind's AlphaFold breakthrough, the company is pairing cutting-edge AI with pharma veterans to design medicines faster, cheaper, and more accurately. Alphabet's secretive drug discovery arm, Isomorphic Labs, is getting ready to start testing its AI-designed drugs in humans, Colin Murdoch, Isomorphic Labs president and Google DeepMind's chief business officer, told Fortune. 'There are people sitting in our office in King's Cross, London, working, and collaborating with AI to design drugs for cancer,' Murdoch said during an interview in Paris. 'That's happening right now.' After years in development, Murdoch says human clinical trials for Isomorphic's AI-assisted drugs are finally in sight. 'The next big milestone is actually going out to clinical trials, starting to put these things into human beings,' he said. 'We're staffing up now. We're getting very close.' The company, which was spun out of DeepMind in 2021, was born from one of DeepMind's most celebrated breakthroughs, AlphaFold, an AI system capable of predicting protein structures with a high level of accuracy. Interactions of AlphaFold progressed from being able to accurately predict individual protein structures to modeling how proteins interact with other molecules like DNA and drugs. These leaps made it far more useful for drug discovery, helping researchers design medicines faster and more precisely, turning the tool into a launchpad for a much larger ambition. 'This was the inspiration for Isomorphic Labs,' Murdoch said of AlphaFold. 'It really demonstrates that we could do something very foundational in AI that could help unlock drug discovery.' In 2024, the same year it released AlphaFold 3, Isomorphic signed major research collaborations with pharma companies Novartis and Eli Lilly. A year later, in April 2025, Isomorphic Labs raised $600 million in its first-ever external funding round, led by Thrive Capital. The deals are part of Isomorphic's plan to build a 'world-class drug design engine,' a system that combines machine learning researchers with pharma veterans to design new medicines faster, more cheaply, and with a higher chance of success. As part of the deals with major pharma players, Isomorphic supports existing drug programs, but it also designs its own internal drug candidates in areas such as oncology and immunology, with the aim of eventually licensing them out after early-stage trials. 'We identify an unmet need, and we start our own drug design programs. We develop those, put them into human clinical trials… we haven't got that yet, but we're making good progress,' he said. Today, pharma companies often spend millions attempting to bring a single drug to market, sometimes with just a 10% chance of success once trials begin. Murdoch believes Isomorphic's tech could radically improve those odds. 'We're trying to do all these things: speed them up, reduce the cost, but also really improve the chance that we can be successful,' he says. He wants to harness AlphaFold's technology to get to a point where researchers have 100% conviction that the drugs they are developing are going to work in human trials. 'One day we hope to be able to say — well, here's a disease, and then click a button and out pops the design for a drug to address that disease,' Murdoch said. 'All powered by these amazing AI tools.' This story was originally featured on
