Schrödinger takes a step forward with AlphaFold in drug R&D, as biotech hits a pipeline ‘inflection’

Schrödinger has work­shopped a fix for one of the biggest prob­lems with Al­phaFold-gen­er­at­ed pro­tein struc­ture pre­dic­tions, in what the com­pa­ny is de­scrib­ing as a no­table im­prove­ment on an AI tech­nol­o­gy that’s used across bio­phar­ma.

Al­phaFold is one of the most high-pro­file ex­am­ples of AI’s im­pact on bi­ol­o­gy, and can gen­er­ate pre­dic­tions of the shape of a pro­tein based on its amino acid se­quence. But be­cause those pre­dic­tions aren’t per­fect, it has lim­it­ed Al­phaFold’s use­ful­ness in drug dis­cov­ery — it’s been de­scribed as a “valu­able hy­poth­e­sis” gen­er­a­tor, but with warn­ings that it can’t re­place ex­per­i­men­tal da­ta.

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