UK startup skips lab work with AI drug simulation

potential sciences, a british startup backed by the uk government's ai venture capital fund sovai, is using artificial intelligence to simulate biochemical data for drug discovery. the company, founded by hatem helal, aims to train ai models on computer-generated data to identify highly targeted drugs for specific diseases, bypassing costly lab experimentation. by generating large-scale chemical datasets through simulations, potential sciences hopes to accelerate the development of new treatments and make it economical for pharmaceutical companies to pursue drugs for rare conditions that have previously gone untreated. the approach relies on predicting how well drug candidates will bind to disease-related proteins, which would require a significant leap forward in ai capabilities. if successful, it could pave the way for more bespoke treatments tailored to individual human biology.