Groundbreaking form of AI ‘could speed up drug development by around six years’
19 March 2025, 15:04
Experts say the approach could also save millions of pounds by cutting projects or clinical trials that would otherwise fail.
A groundbreaking type of artificial intelligence (AI) could speed up new drug development by around six years, researchers say.
Cancer patients could get access to new medicines in half the current time, while drugs for other diseases will also be speeded up.
Scientists have developed a “revolutionary” AI fingerprint technology that can accurately show how cancer cells respond to new drugs, by simply observing changes to their shape.
Created by experts at the Institute of Cancer Research, London (ICR), it means scientists can quickly assess the ability of new drugs to reach their intended target, cutting years off the drug development process.
The team believe their approach could also save millions of pounds by highlighting which projects or clinical trials are likely to fail.
The work further helps scientists match the right drugs to the right patients – enabling them to design clinical trials for specific cancer sub-types at a much earlier stage.
Chris Bakal, professor of cancer morphodynamics at the ICR, said: “3D cell shape is like a fingerprint of cellular state and function – it’s a previously untapped reservoir of information.
“Using AI, we can decode this fingerprint and reveal how cells respond to drugs.
“The tool that we’ve created is so powerful that we will be able to streamline the years-long drug discovery process, saving both time and money.
“Patients with cancer need new treatment options as quickly as possible, so speeding up this process will be hugely valuable.”
Developing a new drug usually takes 10 to 12 years but the team said this could now be cut down dramatically.
The pre-clinical phase of development could be slashed from three years to three months. The time taken to trial new drugs could be cut by up to six years.
Dr Matt De Vries, co-founder and chief technology officer of Sentinal4D, the spinout company set up by the researchers to take the tool forward, said:
“With the AI tool we’ve created, it will be possible to predict how effective a drug will be and if there are likely to be any side effects.
“The tool could work for a range of diseases, as we’ve shown that it will pick up the changes in shape for a number of different cell types and drugs.”
To create the tool, the ICR team trained the AI technology using almost 100,000 3D images of melanoma skin cancer cells – taken with cutting-edge microscopy – where it analysed information about the shape of the cells.
Previous technologies have been trained only on flat, 2D images of cells.
Writing in the journal Cell Systems, the team told how they treated the cells with a variety of drugs and used the AI to learn which shape changes were caused by each drug.
The tool could predict which drug was being used on the cells with up to 99.3% accuracy.
It could even distinguish between the shape changes caused by different drugs which had similar effects on the cell.
The AI accurately learned the underlying biochemical changes that occur in cells and identified proteins that could be the target for new drugs.
The team also showed their AI tool worked for other cell types, including red blood cells, cells in brain vessels, and stem cells, indicating that other diseases could benefit from the technology.
Professor Kristian Helin, chief executive of the ICR, said: “The ICR is dedicated to discovering new drugs to meet the challenges of cancer evolution and drug resistance, so cancer patients have more treatment options – extending and saving lives.
“This latest technology builds on years of work at the ICR to understand cancer cell shape and to use artificial intelligence to analyse data.
“I look forward to seeing this technology being used to develop new medicines that have a real impact for people with cancer.”
