Mount Sinai Launches AI Small Molecule Drug Discovery Center

What You Should Know: 

– The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has launched the AI Small Molecule Drug Discovery Center, a pioneering initiative that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) to revolutionize the process of drug development. 

– The new center aims to integrate AI with traditional drug discovery methods to identify and design novel small-molecule therapeutics with unprecedented speed and precision.

Accelerating Drug Discovery with AI

Unlike conventional drug discovery, which can be a lengthy and costly process, AI-driven approaches enable researchers to rapidly explore a vast chemical landscape, including natural products, to pinpoint promising drug candidates. By combining Mount Sinai’s expertise in machine learning, chemical biology, and biomedical data science, the center seeks to bring innovative treatments to patients more quickly, particularly for diseases with urgent unmet needs, such as cancer, metabolic disorders, and neurodegenerative diseases.

Core Focus Areas

The AI Small Molecule Drug Discovery Center will concentrate on three core areas:

• Designing Novel Drug-Like Molecules: Using generative AI to create new potential therapeutics.
• Optimizing Existing Compounds: Enhancing the efficacy and safety of existing drugs.
• Predicting Drug-Target Interactions: Repurposing known drugs or natural products for new therapeutic uses.

Transforming Traditional Drug Design

Experts at the center aim to revolutionize the drug discovery process by integrating AI-driven predictions into traditional rational drug design approaches. By training AI models on extensive datasets of molecular structures and biological activity, researchers can anticipate the properties of new compounds before they are even synthesized. This capability has the potential to save years of experimental work.

Collaboration and Training

The AI Small Molecule Drug Discovery Center will also foster collaborations with leading pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms, and academic institutions to accelerate drug development. In addition, it will provide hands-on training for the next generation of scientists through seminars, internship programs, and AI-driven drug discovery hackathons.

Leadership and Expertise

The center is guided by a distinguished Scientific Advisory Board, composed of leading experts in drug discovery and machine learning:

• Jian Jin, PhD: Mount Sinai Professor in Therapeutics Discovery and Director of the Mount Sinai Center for Therapeutics Discovery.
• Dr. Zhou: Co-Director of the Drug Discovery Institute and Professor of Oncological Sciences.
• Marta Filizola, PhD: Sharon and Frederick Klingenstein-Nathan Kase, MD Professor and Dean of the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.
• Girish Nadkarni, MD, MPH, CPH: Chair of the Windreich Department of Artificial Intelligence and Human Health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and Director of the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health.