Google Cloud launches two new AI-powered tools to accelerate drug discovery and precision medicine

Google Cloud has launched two new AI-powered life sciences solutions designed to assist biotech and pharmaceutical companies in expediting drug discovery and making progress in precision medicine. The tools are aimed at accelerating drug discovery and precision medicine for biotech companies, pharmaceutical firms, and public sector organizations.

One of the tools called the Target and Lead Identification Suite, is designed to help companies and researchers quickly predict antibody structures, assess the structure and function of amino acid mutagenesis, and accelerate de novo protein design. “This solution also enables lead optimization that can be used to discover novel, high-quality candidates at low cost; for quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) studies; or for free energy perturbation (FEP) calculations,” Google said in a statement.

The second tool, the Multiomics Suite, will help researchers ingest, store, analyze and share mass amounts of genomic data. Google Cloud’s Multiomics Suite revolutionizes precision medicine by leveraging multiomics data to generate valuable insights that propel scientific breakthroughs.

Multiomics Suite empowers biotech companies to streamline and expedite the analysis of genomic data, facilitate the design of clinical genomics, accelerate personalized medicine initiatives, and interpret genomic information to uncover novel discoveries. Additionally, the suite offers a structured framework and collaborative tools for researchers and data scientists, eliminating the need to invest time in developing entirely new pathways, algorithms, or methodologies.

The news comes less than a month after Google unveiled Med-PaLM 2, a medical AI model to rival ChatGP. Med-PaLM 2 is Google’s second version of an AI platform designed specifically to provide answers to medical questions.

According to Google, pharmaceutical companies such as Cerevel and Pfizer are already using the Target and Lead Identification Suite—and Colossal Biosciences is adopting the Multiomics Suite—to bring therapeutics to market faster. Google Cloud made the announcement during the Bio-IT World Conference held in Boston.

“We’ve long been involved with creating new tools for understanding and working with the code of life, like high-performance computing for genomic analytics, and artificial intelligence that can predict three-dimensional models of proteins,” said Shweta Maniar, global director, Life Sciences Strategy and Solutions, Google Cloud. “These new solutions launching today can transform life sciences organizations by accelerating drug discovery and bringing therapeutics to market faster. When patients are waiting for that life-saving treatment in cancer care or that quality-of-life medicine for migraine headaches, this faster time-to-market can have an incredibly positive impact on lives.”

Below is a video overview of the AI-powered tools.