News: November 8

Alphabet Chases Wonder Drugs With DeepMind AI Spinoff Isomorphic Labs Predicting the structure of proteins, the complex molecules underpinning all biology, is notoriously difficult. But DeepMind’s AlphaFold2 made a quantum leap in capability, producing results that matched experimental data down to a resolution of a few atoms. ........ In July, the company published a paper describing AlphaFold2, open-sourced the code, and dropped a library of 350,000 protein structures with a promise to add 100 million more. ......... There have been three AI drug discovery IPOs in the last year, and mature startups—including Exscientia, Insilico Medicine, Insitro, Atomwise, and Valo Health—have earned hundreds of millions in funding. Companies like Genentech, Pfizer, and Merck are likewise working to embed AI in their processes. ........ “Biology is likely far too complex and messy to ever be encapsulated as a simple set of neat mathematical equations,” Hassabis wrote in his recent blog post.

“But just as mathematics turned out to be the right description language for physics, biology may turn out to be the perfect type of regime for the application of AI.”

Protein Folding AI Is Making a ‘Once in a Generation’ Advance in Biology Proteins are the minions of life. They form our bodies, fuel our metabolism, and are the target of most of today’s medicine. ......... Similar to Transformers, many protein units further assemble into massive, moving complexes that change their structure depending on their functional needs at the moment. ......... One of biology’s grandest challenges for the past 50 years has been deciphering how a simple one-dimensional ribbon-like structure turns into 3D shapes, equipped with canyons, ridges, valleys, and caves. ........ Deciphering protein folding is bound to illuminate an entire new landscape of biology we haven’t been able to study or manipulate. The fast and furious development of Covid-19 vaccines relied on scientists parsing multiple protein targets on the virus, including the spike proteins that vaccines target. Many proteins that lead to cancer have so far been out of the reach of drugs because their structure is hard to pin down.



In Glasgow, I saw three big shifts in the climate conversation A lot has changed in the past six years. ...... The climate conversation has shifted dramatically, and for the better. ....... accomplishing that will require a green Industrial Revolution in which we decarbonize virtually the entire physical economy: how we make things, generate electricity, move around, grow food, and cool and heat buildings ........

we need a huge number of new inventions

.......... (It made me wish we could get the same kind of turnout and excitement for conferences on global health!)

Why scaling innovation is key to stopping climate change Before the last major COP meeting, innovation was barely on the climate agenda. This year it will take center stage. ..........

innovation is the only way the world can cut greenhouse gas emissions from roughly 51bn tonnes per year to zero by 2050.

.......... sustainable airplane fuel,

green steel

and extra-powerful batteries—now exist and are ready to scale. ........... Once you can make green hydrogen in a lab, you have to prove that that it works—safely and reliably—at scale. That means building an enormous physical plant, ironing out engineering, supply chain and distribution issues, repeating them over and over again and steadily cutting costs. Demonstration projects like this are hugely complicated, extremely risky, and extraordinarily expensive—and it’s very hard to finance them. ......... At COP, the world should put scaling clean technology innovation—both for mitigating the worst impacts of climate and for adapting to the impacts that we will already feel—on the agenda in the same way it put R&D on it in 2015.

My message to the world at COP26 We need to make zero-carbon alternatives affordable for people all over the world......... It’s deeply unfair that the world’s poorest people, who contribute the least to climate change, will suffer from its effects the most. Rich and middle-income countries are causing the vast majority of climate change, and we need to be the ones to step up and invest more in adaptation. ....... People are already being affected by a warmer planet. Those impacts will only get worse, especially for the world’s poorest. .........