What You Should Know:
– Salt AI, a company founded by the high-performance computing (HPC) team behind MySpace, is making significant strides in AI-driven drug discovery through its research partnership with the Ellison Medical Institute, led by cancer researcher Dr. David Agus.
– The partnership signifies Salt AI’s formal entry into the life sciences sector and has already yielded notable advancements. Key among these is the ability to run AlphaFold2, a foundation model for predicting protein folding, at a speed 22 times faster than commercially available versions.
AI Accelerates Drug Discovery
Salt AI employs AlphaFold2 as a validation step in its drug discovery process, following diffusion model predictions of structure and sequence model predictions of amino acid chains. The team is now focusing on enhancing diffusion model performance, a computationally intensive step.
Salt AI provides a life sciences-dedicated AI workflow platform designed to ensure optimal performance for various models, including image, structure, and sequence-based models. The platform allows for the integration of best-of-breed models and facilitates seamless switching between models as new options emerge. Additionally, Salt AI’s visualization of workflows enables real-time collaboration among experts such as biochemists, oncologists, and executives throughout the drug discovery process.
“Since we met the team almost a year ago, Salt AI’s platform has helped us to innovate at rapid speed in designing new therapeutics for cancer,” said Dr. David Agus, CEO of the Ellison Medical Institute. “By enabling research laboratories access to AI-powered drug design, Salt AI is accelerating timelines and scalability of cancer drug design.”