Vinod Khosla: AI Is Creating a 'Hyperabundance' of New Drugs, but Testing Remains '18th-Century'
核心洞察
Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla argues that AI has produced a "21st-century hyperabundance of potential new drugs and biological hypotheses," while drug testing still relies on conventional animal studies.
Khosla contends the industry needs a more human-relevant approach, describing current methods as "18th-century style animal testing."
He highlighted Vivodyne (搜索), a biotechnology company evaluating drugs in living human tissues at industrial scale and developing a "Virtual Human" data center to predict patient responses.
Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla said artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly expanding drug discovery, but traditional testing methods have failed to keep pace with the technology's progress. In a post on X on Wednesday, Khosla said AI has produced what he described as a "21st-century hyperabundance of potential new drugs and biological hypotheses," while drug testing still relies heavily on conventional animal studies.
He argued that the industry needs a more human-relevant approach to evaluating potential treatments. "We are still using 18th-century style animal testing," Khosla wrote.
A Human-Relevant Alternative
Khosla pointed to Vivodyne (搜索), a biotechnology company developing technology to test drugs using living human tissues at scale. "Instead, @Vivodyne is evaluating drugs in living human tissues at industrial scale," Khosla said.
He also said he was excited to continue working with Vivodyne (搜索) as the company develops its "Virtual Human" data center, which he said could eventually help researchers predict how patients will respond to treatments.
AI's Growing Role in Drug Discovery
Earlier, Anthropic (搜索), Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. (搜索), Nvidia Corp. (搜索) and Eli Lilly and Co. (搜索) highlighted the growing role of AI in drug discovery and medical research.
Anthropic (搜索) launched Claude Science, an AI workbench that combined scientific literature analysis, computational biology, code generation and large-scale computing, with access to more than 60 scientific skills and connectors.
Takeda reported that its AI-developed psoriasis (搜索) drug zasocitinib significantly outperformed Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. (搜索)'s Sotyktu in a Phase 3 trial, with more than 35% of patients achieving complete skin clearance at week 16.
Meanwhile, Nvidia and Eli Lilly announced a $1 billion AI co-innovation lab aimed at combining AI with biological research to accelerate drug development.