Artificial intelligence (A.I.) has taken the world by storm recently. Hundreds of news stories have been written in the past week about projects that have used A.I.. A recent opinion piece dissected the effects of A.I. on integrity in academia. A sports journal compiled a list of the top ten basketball players of all time using A.I.. Another media outlet has turned to the technology to provide commentary during their broadcast of Wimbledon. But on Thursday, June 29, the first drug to ever be fully generated by artificial intelligence entered clinical trials with human patients.

Insilico Medicine, a Hong Kong based startup, created a drug called INS018_055 developed by A.I.. The drug aims to treat idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF), a chronic disease that causes scarring in the lungs. Normally when a person breathes in, oxygen moves through the lungs into tiny air sacs where it’s absorbed by the blood to be transported to one’s organs. However, with the scarring caused by IPF, tissue within the lungs thickens. This makes it more difficult for air to flow through the lungs, which keeps the body from working as it should. IPF affects about 100,000 people within the United States and can cause death two to five years after diagnosis.

The discovery process for the drug began in 2020. The drug aims to deliver an effective treatment for IPF without any harmful side effects that are common among other current treatment options. The drug is not the first to be created using A.I., but it is the first to enter human clinical trials.

Insilico has two other A.I.-generated medicines in their pipeline. One is a COVID-19 drug in phase one clinical trial and the other is a cancer drug that recently received FDA approval to initiate trials. The company focuses on developing algorithms and technology that can discover and design new molecules to treat diseases and illnesses.

The company’s method of using A.I. for drug discovery aims to make the process cheaper and faster. Today on average, it takes ten years to develop a new drug, and the process requires billions of dollars in funding. However, A.I. can help predict how potential drugs might behave in the body without any of the skill or time that lab work requires. Most drugs that are produced by scientists require a trial-and-error approach that can be challenging, time-consuming, and costly. A.I. helps to minimize the use of resources, money, and time.

Given the benefits of utilizing A.I. to produce new medication, many labs and companies will be using the technology for drug development. There are still so many diseases that don’t have any treatment options or can only be treated with medication with many painful side effects. So as the first round of A.I. developed drugs make their way through clinical trials, it may be possible that the design process has changed forever.