Artificial-Intelligence can Predict Ebola Drugs Effectiveness 150 Times Faster

A team of researchers hunting for new Ebola treatments have come up with "groundbreaking" artificial-intelligence that can predict the effectiveness of new medicines 150 times faster than current methods, reveals a new research. A startup supported by the University of Toronto, Chematria, programmed Canada's fastest supercomputer with an algorithm that simulates and analyzes "millions of potential medicines" to predict their effectiveness against Ebola, Mashable reported.

The cofounder and CEO of Chematria, Abraham Heifets, said that what they are attempting would have been considered science fiction, until now as they are going to explore the possible effectiveness of millions of drugs, something that used to take decades of physical research and tens of millions of dollars, in mere days with their technology.

Chematria claims that the technology is a virtual drug-discovery platform that helps pharmaceutical companies to determine which molecules can become medicines.

According to the company, the system is driven by a virtual brain, modeled on the human visual cortex, that teaches itself by studying millions of datapoints about how drugs have worked in the past.

It added that with this vast knowledge, Chematria's brain can apply the patterns it perceives, to predict the effectiveness of hypothetical drugs, and suggest surprising uses for existing drugs, transforming the way medicines are discovered.

Source-ANI